There’s a lot of pain in this country. The CDC has just released the results of The National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey, and it’s not a happy story.
Nearly 1 in 5 women (18.3%) and 1 in 71 men (1.4%) in the United States have been raped at some time in their lives, including completed forced penetration, attempted forced penetration, or alcohol/drug facilitated completed penetration.
More than half (51.1%) of female victims of rape reported being raped by an intimate partner and 40.8% by an acquaintance; for male victims, more than half (52.4%) reported being raped by an acquaintance and 15.1% by a stranger.
Approximately 1 in 21 men (4.8%) reported that they were made to penetrate someone else during their lifetime; most men who were made to penetrate someone else reported that
the perpetrator was either an intimate partner (44.8%) or an acquaintance (44.7%).An estimated 13% of
women and 6% of men have experienced sexual coercion
in their lifetime (i.e., unwanted sexual penetration after being pressured in a nonphysical way); and 27.2% of women and 11.7% of men have experienced unwanted sexual contact.Most female victims of completed rape (79.6%) experienced their first rape before the age of 25; 42.2% experienced their first completed rape before the age of 18 years.
More than one-quarter of male victims of completed rape (27.8%) experienced their first rape when they were 10 years of age or younger.
The survey used standard methods to get a representative sample: random digit dialing of both cell and landlines, and a fairly thorough phone interview. They got about 9,000 women and 7,000 men to participate. This is a reasonably definitive study by a respected organization, and it confirms prior estimates of the frequency of rape in the US.
I just thought you’d want to know the depressing news before you went to bed.
…why do they only count penetration?
Ah, read too fast.
I find the 1 in 21 vs. the 1 in 71 interesting and unsurprising, but I suspect a few people are having their assumptions challenged. I’m also disturbed that I’ve become so accustomed to depressing statistics that this is just about all that catches my attention. :(
Yuck!
You can add that, “1 in 4 women surveyed by the government say they were violently attacked by their husbands or boyfriends.”
http://news.yahoo.com/survey-1-4-women-attacked-intimate-partner-225334654.html
I’ll be sleeping in the fetal position tonight.
Generally unsurprising. Still horrifying, but unsurprising.
Wait, I am confused by the 1 in 21 vs. 1 in 71 thing. If 1 in 21 men has been made non-consensually to penetrate someone, then at least 1 in 21 men has been raped, plus any men who have been non-consensually penetrated by others. What’s with 1 in 71?
The 1 in 71 are the ones who have been non-consensually penetrated. They’re counting being made to penetrate someone else differently.
…which implies (speaking somewhat imprecisely) that women rape men about 2.5 times as often as men do, even if we (generously) assume that men force other men to penetrate them at the same rate that they forcibly penetrate other men. (Hence what I meant about assumptions being challenged, since I’ve met people who assert that it’s implausible or literally impossible for a woman to rape a man.)
I don’t understand how they get people to participate in these phone surveys. There’s no way I would talk about any of this stuff to a random stranger who called me up.
Wouldn’t that mean that the numbers are probably low? I mean, wouldn’t a victim be less likely to talk about this sort of thing than a person who’s never been victimized?
Ah. That’s sort of what I suspected but I wasn’t fully certain. They shouldn’t. :/
They shouldn’t but it’s a step forward that they even consider it relevant to rape statistics at all. Most people still seem to feel either than an erection ipso facto indicates consent, and/or that no man would ever voluntarily refuse sex. I have vividly ugly memories of one particular commenter who insisted (among other things) that all men who claimed to have been raped were just trying to weasel out of paying child support, over on Blaghag (and got quite deservingly banned).
The 1 in 5 for women is depressing, but sadly not surprising to me. This caught my eye:
Makes me wonder how many 10-18 year old males get raped, and how many adult (18+) males get raped.
Stevarious says:
On the other hand, busy people who’ve never been raped, upon being told it is a Sexual Violence survey, could be more likely to not bother participating for various reasons – they don’t care as the matter doesn’t concern them, they don’t want to waste time answering no to 100 questions and so on.
So who knows.
@Azkyroth
Wait, I don’t get how you’re determining gender.
(I’m a little tipsy, so forgive if I’m overlooking something here.)
Am I correct then in surmising that only 8.1% of rapes against women are committed by strangers?
I don’t have a point or anything, this is just a statistic I’ve been looking for for a while.
Stacy:
1 in 71 men has been forcibly penetrated. I’m assuming that in the vast majority of those cases the forcible penetrator was a man penetrating with a penis. The gender of the penetratee is identified.
1 in 21 men has been forced to penetrate someone else, presumably again with his own penis. Even assuming that for every case in which a man was forcibly penetrated, one of those 1 in 21 cases was of a man forcing another man to penetrate him, which seems unlikely given the power dynamics of rape and the social dynamics surrounding sex and in particular the connotations of penetrator and penetratee, the remaining cases, assumed to be cases in which a man was forced to penetrate a woman, are 3.4% (4.8% – 1.4%) of men. 3.4/1.4 = 2.423, which is fairly close to 2 1/2, implying that men are at least 2.5 times as likely to be forced to penetrate a woman as to be forcibly penetrated by another man. In reality, it’s probably higher than that, since rape is about power and being penetrated has connotations of powerlessness for men, so the number of men forced to penetrate another man is probably much lower than the number forcibly penetrated.
I suppose, since the language here doesn’t explicitly rule it out and I haven’t read the original survey, one could presume that in those cases the man and woman were both being forced into the act by a third party, but I don’t see any reason to assume that accounts for the majority of them other than an a priori commitment to the idea that women never or virtually never commit rape.
That’s about right. Unfortunately, strangers and “strange” men are what society teaches women to be afraid of and to associate with rape – partly because privileged fuckheads want it that way, and partly because those are the cases that even total assholes will usually grudgingly admit “really” count as rape.
And people wonder why I always have a edged weapon close at hand. I know peoplw who have been rapped and in all cases it was someone they knew.
If you’ll excuse me I’m going to ge be very depressed now.
Count me in with the people who question whether rape should only be limited to being forced to be penetrated, rather than being forced to penetrate another. In my view, any non-consensual penetration of a sexual manner is rape.
If anything, these scary statistics underplay the dangers of rape, since they apparently defined rape too narrowly. Another question: how many women have been forced against their will to penetrate another person with something (and how often was that other person consenting)? Was that even counted? I downloaded the full report, but still have to go through it. Hopefully they at least addressed the issue of being forced to penetrate another as rape.
I wonder if some of you are assuming that the person penetrated by those who reported that they were made to penetrate someone else was necessarily the same person who forced them to penetrate someone else.
There would also be cases involving three people, where the respondent reports feeling coerced by one to rape the other.
Depressing and sad, to be sure. I suspect that the number of men who have been raped (the number given of 1 in 71) is unfortunately higher than that. Men tend to have real issues reporting being the victim of rape because those pesky Macho-man-esq social norms that prevent such a thing.
Crazy story, I had a friend (male) who was the victim of intimate partner violence from his wife at the time. He was so embarrassed by this that he actually threatened violence to his friends if they told anyone. And that story didn’t have a happy ending–because he refused any type of help.
I remember in psychiatry on IPV, that seemed to typify the stories of psychiatrists (the extreme embarrassment and helplessness) about their male patients (in either gay or straight relationships) who were being abused. In fact, as sad as it is, our lectures (LSWs, PsyDs, MDs etc) talked very little about male victims in medical school because the statistics about male rape and IPV victims is so bad.
Anyway, thanks PZ going have to dig into the Lunesta stash now
Unsurprising, but shocking nonetheless. I really don’t get people at all, why they would do something like this. I know it is mostly a minority of men who do it over and over again, but darn it, they are ruining it for everyone else.
@Ibyea,
There is lots of sad reasons why. Sometimes (as someone above suggested) it is a power thing, especially with male-male raping. Sometimes it is a impulse control thing (as seen in many different kinds of psychiatric illnesses) or even things like brain damage (damage to the frontotemporal lobes can remove our ability inhibit behavior that is socially unacceptable).
And sometimes, sometimes the person is just a fucking asshole.
omniz said:
This study report does not appear to state the precise statistic you are requesting. It does say that of the women who have been raped (attempted, completed, & drug assisted), 51.1% have been raped by an intimate partner, 12.5 % by a family member, 2.5% by an authority figure, 40.8% by an acquaintance, and 13.8% by a stranger. This adds up to over 100% because about 30% of women have been raped more than once.
Hope this helps.
Sorry, the last line should read: This adds up to over 100% because about 30% of women who have been raped have been raped more than once.
From page 17 of the full report:
I’m not at all surprised.
Stevarious:
It depends on a lot of factors. I talk openly about my experiences here, it’s helpful to a lot of people. Sometimes, it’s much easier for people to answer questions if it’s done for research, it allows them to stay somewhat distanced from it and they also know they won’t be talking to this person again, they won’t have to see them or face them on a day to day basis, which is one of the reasons survivors often don’t tell those closest to them.
How could this be true if 1 in 5 (20%) of women have been raped at all?
OK, that clarifies things.
I’m sorry again. I’m no longer certain I have interpreted the study correctly. The table containing the data in my previous comment had this footnote:
This seems to indicate that, for example, in the 13.8% of rapes, a stranger was a perpetrator. Someone whose brain isn’t so fuzzy should confirm this. I apologize for my confusion.
I’m a little iffy on some of the questions in the Appendix C Question List of the Report, but most of the study is solid and depressing in my view.
I believe these statistics may be misleading.
Look at the breakdown:
completed forced penetration 620,000
attempted forced penetration 519,000
complete alcohol/drug facilitated penetration 781,000
First of all, the study included attempted rape as rape. Also, it included sex facilitated by alcohol. True, some men may take advantage of an intoxicated woman. But are there not also many young woman who engage in the drunken hook up culture? Could a regreted hookup be counted under this definition? I note that 80% of the rapes occured for women under 25 – exactly the age group which contains a subset of women who participate in the drunken hookup culture.
I we exclude attemped penetration (which isn’t actually rape), and also remove the cases where the woman was drunk (just to see how much difference it makes), the statistic drops from one in five to less than one in fifteen.
Another interesting point – your likelihood of being raped is strongly correlated with whether you have been raped in the past. Could it be that both are correlated with whether you are a part of the hookup culture? From the report:
More than one-third (35.2%) of the women who reported a completed rape before the age of 18 also experienced a completed rape as an adult, compared to 14.2% of the women who did not report being raped prior to age 18 (Figure 2.3). Thus, the percentage of women who were raped as children or adolescents and also raped as adults was more than two times higher than the percentage among women without an early rape history.
I’m very interested to know, for those incidents of “attempted forced penetration”, what caused the man to stop? Did the woman overpower the man or manage to run away, or did he stop voluntarily when she firmly told him to stop? I’m a little concerned that attempted forced penetration could include a hormone-fueled boy getting a bit carried away, but relenting when she spoke firmly.
And the rape apologetics begins.
Khantron, at no point did I say that rape is ok. I’ve raised some questions about the methodology used to obtain the statistics. This is a blog about science and critical thinking, isn’t it?
Hey benwoodward! You’ve now made three posts. I’m so glad that you’ve done that, because now I feel absolutely no guilt of any kind about saying this: You’re a shameful fucking excuse for a human being. Kindly get the fuck out of here.
Given the definition used in the study that the attempted rapes involved physical violence or the threat of violence, the “hormone-fueled boy” hypothesis seems unlikely.
I mean the attempt to explain away situations with absolutely no data, that’s rape apologetics right? Anything to cast doubt on any rape statistics. Look, human interactions are difficult and complicated. But whenever a study like this comes around there is an immediate impulse to minimize the implications as much as possible, and this impulse alone is troubling, right?
I’m more concerned with this:
At the very least, “sexual pressure due to someone using their influence or authority” should be included as rape, I’d think.
Nor would it excuse anything if it were the case.
But you know, benwoodward is so fucking concerned.
For the poor hormone-fueled boys.
So fucking concerned.
This, your bizarre and idiotic jump from repeated victimization to the fucking hookup culture as though our willingness to have consensual casual sex is somehow fucking relevant to the number of times we will be raped, is standard misogynistic rape apologetics, scumbag.
Not surprising. There’s always people, usually men, who try to minimize rape statistics.
Correction: This, and*
Classical Cipher:
No, of course not. I agree that bevwoodward is trying to minimize the situation. I was just hoping it wasn’t conscious, and was trying to correct a possible misunderstanding about the definitions used in the study.
No but you have tried to point out different forms of sexual assault that are permissible. For example, sex with a drunk person who can’t fight back and “hormone-fueled” sexual advance.
That and your attempts to dismiss date rape as the inevitable cause of of ‘hook-up’ culture marks you as a clear rape apologist.
Defining rape to include sex facilitated by alcohol is clearly very problematic, because there *are* men and women who get drunk up to their eyeballs with the expectation of having sex with a stranger. It seems to me that any sex between a drunken man and woman could be claimed as rape by the woman in the morning.
Khantron – I do not believe that the impulse to question things is ever troubling.
Classical Cipher – your posts seem to be mainly swearing and abuse with little content so I don’t think I will respond to them.
If the study didn’t break things down into so many categories, someone would complain that it’s not specific enough to be informative.
benwoodward: As if 1 in 5 is terrible, but 1 in 15 is OK!
And you’re wrong on your figures anyway. Even only counting completed forced penetration, the lifetime risk for US women is 12.3% or very nearly 1 in 8. (Page 18 of the full report)
And with 80% of first rapes occurring before age 25, that means that over 1 in 10 US women will have been raped by the time they’re 25.
These are truly shocking figures.
So how much concern do you have for this person’s partner, who was in an uncomfortable and potentially terrifying physical situation, compared to the concern you have for the person who was possibly miscounted anonymously in a survey?
If you’re really interested in understanding and not just engaging in rape apologetics, I suggest you go read this Rape Myth #1: She’s probably lying
In other words, your refusal to acknowledge the content of my comments based on the presence of swear words (SHOCK HORROR) is predictable and not helping your case at all. Perhaps try and take a moment to understand why fucking rape apologia and bullshit assumptions about rape might make someone angry enough to (OHNO) say mean mean naughty words. You sniveling sack of slime.
From page 106, these are the questions about alcohol and drugs:
“When you were drunk, high, drugged, or passed out and unable to consent, how many people ever…
• had vaginal sex with you? By vaginal sex, we mean that {if female: a man or boy put his penis in your vagina} {if male: a woman or girl made you put your penis in her vagina}?
• {if male} made you perform anal sex, meaning that they made you put your penis into their anus?
• made you receive anal sex, meaning they put their penis into your anus?
• made you perform oral sex, meaning that they put their penis in your mouth or made you penetrate their vagina or anus with your mouth?
• made you receive oral sex, meaning that they put their mouth on your {if male: penis} {if female: vagina} or anus?”
bevwoodwar:
You surely acknowledge that men do sometimes rape women who are “drunk, high, drugged, or passed out”. If so, then how can we find out how frequently this happens, besides asking the anonymous respondents? Are you suggesting that the proportion of anonymous respondents who report these rapes and are lying about it is so high that we must ignore all of them?
I think it’s safe to assume the answer to that question is none.
pdurrent – I never said one in fifteen is ok. My figures are accurate from the breakdown in my previous post – almost 70% of the incidents counted as rapes were either attempted rapes or involved alcohol.
chiral – you haven’t understood my point. It makes a big difference to our understanding of the problem whether a woman was violently beaten and dragged behind some bushes, or a boy got fresh in the back seat and was pushy about fingering her (the study included attempted fingering as rape). What if most of the incidents contributing to the statistics are the latter?
He’s suggesting these women regret the ‘hook-up’ and would like to claim rape (thereby falsely accusing an innocent man of rape) in order to save face.
The next time they do this study, the first question should be reformatted to match the others, like so:
“When you were drunk, high, drugged, or passed out and unable to consent, how many people ever made you {if female: receive vaginal sex} {if male: perform vaginal sex}? By vaginal sex, we mean that {if female: a man or boy put his penis in your vagina} {if male: a woman or girl made you put your penis in her vagina}?”
I…really wanna choke you right now.
Say, how many cases of child abuse and sexual harassment were just an older brother or father feeling up his younger sister with no actual penis to vagina penetration?
Well, we made it until post #31 for this to happen
bevwoodward
No, you only argued that “X isn’t really rape”, which is the classical tactic of rape-apologists everywhere. You agree that rape is bad, but then you go on defining rape so narrowly that hardly anybody who hasn’t been attacked by a stranger while wearing the appropriate cloths in broad daylight at a park with families having picknicks all around gets counted as a rape victim.
Shame on you.
So, why didn’t you go then and read the fucking whole thing and tried to understand the methodology before came here dismissing the findings because you thinks their methodology of which you have no clue because you couldn’t be bothered to find out about it is allegedly flawed because you disagree with their findings.
That, dear cupcake, is classical rape-apology.
Wow, three squares on the rape-apologist bingo in as many sentences.
For this particular statement I refer you to Jason’s The problem with privilege or evidential skepticism. Sorry, Jason.
Don’t forget your porcupine on the way out, don’t bother coming back thanking me for the important lesson you learned.
Just stop being an asshole rape-apologist.
bevwoodwar
You’re mistaken. You used the figures for the last 12 month period, and then applied them to the lifetime figures.
Does anyone remember that study that found the involvement of alcohol (regardless of how explicit the rape scenario given was) made men more willing to declare it consensual?
Julian – no, I’m not suggesting that the women are being dishonest. I’m wondering weather the questions asked may have been ambiguous. There was a previous study which claimed that 1 in 4 women will be raped, and as pointed out by Christina Hoff Sommers in “Who stole feminism”, 75% of the women who were counted as rape victims by the study, did not believe they had ever been raped.
It’s worth noting that according to this study, if you don’t become intoxicated in a public space to the point that you have no control over who has sex with you, your chances of rape are actually 1 in 15, not 1 in 5 (I’ve again removed the attempted rapes from the definition). This is significant because none of my friends engage in that sort of behaviour, and for them the chances of rape are therefore much lower than the presented statistics suggest.
How is it problematic? Rape is sex without consent. If someone is very drunk they cannot give consent.
Do you have any empathy at all? Obviously the violent rapes are worse all around, but they are probably a minority. Someone getting finger-raped by their date is still fucking awful. It’s still a violent act and the situation your describing would be scary as fuck. If you can’t see that, then there is something wrong with you.
Are you seriously suggesting that the fact that there are people out there who feel they have a right to fondle and penetrate other people’s bodies without consent is somehow trivial because they didn’t beat their victims up as well? If so, fuck you.
I might have been clearer. The number of rapes (completed, attempted, and drug-assisted) you cite are the results from the 12 month period preceding the study. You then used these figures to alter the 1 in 5 chance of a woman being raped in her lifetime. This was invalid, and as pdurrant explained in message 48, the actual chance of completed rape is about 1 in 8.
Many victims of abuse don’t and what the does that have to do with the study we’re looking at now?
raped
No one is having sex with these people. They are being raped.
Until now, I have followed most topics like these only up to a certain point, so I am sure this has been answered somewhere already – so a link or two is a perfectly good answer.
I have just been wondering if there are cultural differences in rape frequency and, well, methods; and, the answer most probably being “yes”, what differences are they, and how come? I.e., what variables of cultural psychology or sociology differ between cultures in regard to rape?
Another question: Say, now, that it turns out that high scores in variable X (say, patriarchal values) facilitates (~causes) rape in culture A. The next question is, how can we change variable X (cause), instead of asking, how can we decrease the frequency of rape (symptom), right? Or does a more direct approach – e.g. campaigns against rape culture, increasing awareness etc. – prove to be more effective?
How did an exemplary culture B deal with variable X – or is there but little comparative data on the subject?
So you hear it: drunk people can’t be raped.
It is your fault if you had alcohol. Might only have been one beer with a bit of rohybnol, but if you didn’t want to have sex, you should have stayed sober.
So, you regret it in the morning? Well, that’s your problem, there are consequences for your slutty behaviour.
Here’s something easy for you, it takes away all the grey areas and doubts: If the other person didn’t say yes (go on, right there, more, more, deeper-deeper, ohmygodthat’sbrilliant also count), or was not able to give consent because of intoxication, or age, it’s rape.
It’s that easy.
Consequence: Unless you can be sure, you don’t perform sexual acts.
Worst case scenario if you don’t go on although the other person wouldn’t have minded: you don’t have sex
Worst case scenario if you do go on and the other person does mind: You rape somebody.
Now compare
It’s problematic because it means you need the full consent of someone before having sex with them and you can’t try to argue in court you thought they were into it.
I cannot tape as fast as you are uttering bullshit
You empathy-free evil monster who dares to blame the victims of rape for what’s happened to them just because “your friends” are so much better than those stupid people who were raped while being intoxicated.
Just go away because you make people here puke.
@julian, I think maybe I wasn’t being very clear. I was asking bevwoodward to explain why ze thought
@Giliell
As previous discussions have revealed ejaculating in someone is the most important thing ever. As long as you don’t beat someone up to do it, it’s ok.
O wait that’s me being discriminatory against people who like to be beat up before sex.
and I’m probably being not clear again by the shortened blockquote. Sorry.
Ze was claiming that we shouldn’t include sex when extremely drunk as rape and I was asking for justification.
One last thing before I go to bed. It is also a mistake to say that because of all the women in the United States, 12.3% have been raped in their lifetimes (using bevwoodward’s extremely limited definition), therefore there is a 1 in 8 chance that a particular woman will be raped. The woman’s age, location, race, and numerous other factors affect the probability very significantly.
@chiral
that was my semi tongue in cheek prediction of why ze objects.
In bevwoodward we have ur first rape apologist.
I’m not in the mood to be reasonable you mother fucking asshole. You are the damn problem, using weal words to excuse and deny enough instances of rape to lower the statistics and minimize the problem. In doing so you contribute to the problem by encouraging under reporting of rape.
You are a useless waste of protoplasm
Go away, bevwoodward. You’re an utterly awful human being.
So bevwoodword, you think a significant number of women (I notice you didn’t use this argument for male rape victims), having had drunken sex they regret would accuse an innocent of rape, rather than, you know, just say “what was I thinking?”? Really? And then would still claim rape on an anonymous poll. Really?
Don’t think much of women, do you.
You deserve the verbal abuse you are going to get. Thank FSM we got that new shipment of ripe deceased porcupines. Have one. In fact, take two.
But don’t be greedy. The number is limited and I expect more will be needed once the other rape apologists wake up this morning.
@julian. Sorry. I think my rage broke my sarcasm meter.
Wouldn’t be the first time that Christina Hoff Sommers has lied.
Would you mind citing chapter and paragraph? Page number would be tolerable, but page numbers change more readily with editions.
As someone who didn’t admit I was raped until more than two years after the first time it happened (and several months after the last time), I seriously resent you using that shit to minimize rape statistics.
Oh, and by the way, as the victim of an uncompleted rape, I am furious that you simply wave away the fear and trauma at the time and later when I found myself not treating men in a friendly fashion because my almost-rapist claimed my friendliness to him was what made him think that I didn’t really mean it when I told him no.
So, yeah, fuck you, bevwoodword. Use both porcupines, because you really are that big of an asshole.
And you still haven’t addressed why you made the speculative jump from “repeated victimization” to “hookup culture,” by the way, rape apologist scum. This repeated victim/teetotalling social phobe is just fuckin’ dying to know.
Which says all about rape-culture and little about the fact that those women have been raped indeed.
Women have been taught the very same bullshit bevwoodword is spewing here over and over again until they actually believe that drunk women can’t be raped. As many researchers have pointed out, it’s often crucial not to use the word rape for getting data both about rape victims and rapists.
So the same woman might answer “yes” to “Has somebody ever had sex with you against your will when you were intoxicated?”, but “no” to “Have you ever been raped?”
They think themselves that if their behaviour wasn’t “faultless” according to people like bevwoodword, then they weren’t raped.
Oh here we go. Chapter 10 paragraph 6 or 7. In CHS’s own words:
So, assuming CHS reports it accurately: 49 percent blame themselves for being raped, 14 percent think they weren’t raped violently enough to call it rape, and 11 percent think that because they got over it they shouldn’t call it rape.
And for this, CHS blames Koss, rather than patriarchy.
From the previous paragraph, these are the questions that CHS complains about:
Each question specifies “when you didn’t want to”, yet Christina Hoff Sommers complains that the Koss’s report is misleading because some of these women didn’t agree that what happened to them constituted rape.
I wonder what CHS thinks it ought to be called instead.
QFT. It’s not the only bullshit out there, either.
I’ve been raped multiple times. The first time I was too young to have complicated thoughts about it* but the second time, I blamed myself for years. “I should have been more firm saying no.” “He just misunderstood me” “I shouldn’t have gone there alone with him.” etc. If you’d asked me in those years if I’d been raped, I would have probably said no. Partially out of embarrassment and partially out of a belief that it was my fault.
But all of that is bullshit. It is not the victim’s fault and the victim blaming needs to stop.
If you feel bad that the rape statistics are so high, don’t sit here and try to argue them away. We don’t want to reduce the rape numbers by lying or changing the definition, but by stopping people from raping other people. If you want to do something real to bring the numbers down, learn to recognize rapey behavior and challenge it whenever you can.
*I do have nightmares about it, which is why I’m even awake at this hour commenting on pharyngula while it’s slow enough that I can almost keep up
bevwoodward @61: The alcohol and drugs cases were cases when the victim was “drunk, high, drugged, or passed out and unable to consent.” (compare eg. love moderately ॐ @51). When somebody is unable to consent, it’s rape. I doubt anybody gets drunk up to their eyeballs with the expectation of having non-consensual sex with a stranger.
bevwoodward:
It matters not that the victim found this a notable enough event to report it as a respondent to the survey?
The what?
Regret means that one thinks that one’s own actions were wrong and that one could have set themselves a better course of action. Reporting that one has been wronged by another is not a regretful act, as that contains no evaluation of one’s own actions or admission of wrongdoing on one’s own part.
The fact that you use “regret”, furthermore, implies that you think there is some sort of wrongdoing on the woman’s part. I honestly have no idea what this might be, could you please explain?
Perhaps. Can you think of any way that you might test this hypothesis?
Things are not made clear because you say they are. You first need to show us where these men and women are, and then you need to show that they are statistically significant — that is, that there are enough to throw the claims into doubt.
Furthermore, you are making two key assumptions. First of all, you are assuming that it is not possible to do this in some sort of responsible fashion, such as by maintaining some sort of trusted community (as is done in, say, the BDSM scene) or preferred courses of action (such as having a sober friend, which one should have in any case if one is getting extremely drunk in a relatively public space). Second, “stranger” is an extremely relative term, because it is possible to be acquainted with someone that you barely know at all, or a person one knows very well could easily have a personal life that is diametrically opposed to the assumptions one makes about said person.
By your use of language alone it appears that you are attempting to set up a stereotype and paint people who get into these situations as somehow being irresponsible. This ties in to what I mentioned earlier with your use of regret, and carries problematic implications about how you think about women and sex.
I thus ask, first: what do you think of when you see the word “slut”?
Second: what do you think I think of when I see the word “slut”?
I can see why some would be fond of her.
Hearing it from a woman must make all those things we did seem so ok. A comforting fantasy that absolves us of any guilt without us ever having to acknowledge what we did was a violation of another human being.
more bevwoodward:
Uh. Where did you get the statistic for the amount of victims who were “intoxicated in a public space to the point that [they had] no control over who [had] sex with [them]”?
For that matter, why do you think it’s okay to post this sort of pronouncement without showing your work at all? Why do you expect us to just believe numbers that you’ve thrown out there with nary a reference to the statistics you’re supposedly analyzing?
Since none of bevwoodward’s friends get shitfaced drunk, rape doesn’t happen.
Have a porcupine on me, rape apologist.
The question was (sort of) asked in the survey.
Page 106 of the summary report:
“When you were drunk, high, drugged, or passed out and unable to consent, how many people have ever…” (followed by questions about various types of sexual contact)
I couldn’t find the statistics for that question. Anyone? Bueller?
bevwoodward (45) says:
Yes it could because she might consider that she had been raped. She might consider this because she was drunk and unable to give consent. This is why it is important to ensure that your sexual partners are consenting to sex rather than just assume that you can fuck someone who is unwilling or unable to give consent. If you do the latter then you are a rapist.
This is important. A woman (or a man) doesn’t have to say no to sex for it to be rape. All they have to do is not give consent. A man or a woman who gets drunk with the expectation of having sex is giving consent but because they are indistinguishable from a man or a woman who gets drunk with no expectation it is probably better to avoid them and choose someone who is able to consent to sex.
Also, and I’m sorry because I’ve just done this in this comment, I find it distasteful that sex is confused with rape. Sex is a shared experience between two or more consenting adults. Rape is about one person using another for their own gratification. If you don’t want to piss people off it is probably worth remembering this and to stop equating rape with sex.
@Chiral #62
Speak for yourself cupcake. The “Guardianista Feminista” Columnist Zoe Williams dealt with the inherently sexist and dangerous nature of this viewpoint when they amended rape laws in the UK a number of years ago:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,821099,00.html
bevwoodward says:
“It’s not that I’m blaming women, it’s just that women are to blame!”
So, bev, your point is that rape would be substantially less of a problem if women just finally learned to behave themselves?
Shit, as soon as I saw the topic I knew the thread would be hijacked by rape-culture apologists. bevwoodward, you’re an asshole.
The great preponderance of acquaintances and partners among the perpetrators certainly accords with what I see in my caseload as a forensic DNA analyst. Where I work, assaults by strangers are very rare.
Who didn’t close the door to the disgusting dimensions and let Gunboat Diplomat escape?
I’m appalled that anyone is making excuses for rape. Pretending that “almost 70% of the incidents counted as rapes were either attempted rapes or involved alcohol” means they weren’t really rape is a staggering fit of illogic. Alcohol is basically the most commonly used rape drug — it’s arguing that once a woman has had a couple of drinks she can be safely ignored if she says “no”. It’s precisely the opposite of the situation described in that awful column by Zoe Williams.
By the way, I’ve never had sex while blind drunk, or while my partner was drunk. Most of the people I know would consider that bad and irresponsible behavior.
Troll,
Williams’s argument about the sexist bit hinges on this: “Next month’s overhaul of the laws covering rape will include the astonishing assertion that a woman who was drunk or under the influence of drugs will automatically be regarded as having been unable to give consent to sex.”
I don’t know whether she reported that accurately, though I wouldn’t be surprised if she did — I’ve noticed that British law makes some incorrect assumptions about precisely how men can be raped.
But you can’t rely on Williams to say that “If someone is very drunk they cannot give consent” is sexist, when Williams’s argument was specifically about women, not just someones.
bevwoodward says:
So rape only really happens to Bad Girls?
That’s a very, very unwise position to take up. Mostly because it isn’t true. But think about it—what if one of your well-behaved friends *has* in fact been raped (and chances are at least one of them has)? How is she supposed to get support from her well-behaved friends if the fact that she was raped puts her into the Bad Girls category? How is she even supposed to let them know she needs their support?
Think about that. Please.
Also, think about this: it should not matter if a woman is sober, drunk, wearing a short skirt, wearing a nun’s habit, flirting, studying, young, elderly, whatever. It should not matter what she is doing. Nobody is entitled to rape her. Nobody.
The reason why women who’ve been drinking may be at higher risk of being raped is that rapists know they can get away with it. Because society—and that means people like you—will assume that oh, well, she’d been drinking, so it wasn’t really rape.
Don’t do that.
So, presumably, if I got bevwoodward too drunk to say “Please don’t kill me” and then killed him/her that would not constitute murder.
It’s even better than that! If you got bevwoodward a little bit drunk, and he said “Please don’t kill me”, you’d still get to argue that it wasn’t murder after you killed him!
The rapes he’s trying to discount are cases where the women called it unwanted sexual contact, but because they were also drunk at the time, he’s trying to argue it doesn’t count as rape. If a woman had sex while drunk but did not call it rape, it wouldn’t have counted as rape.
I 100% second this. I couldn’t admit it was rape for a long time either. Blamed myself for it for a long time after admitting it was rape.
So, benniepoo, jump off a bridge. You’re unworthy of our oxygen.
Gunboat Diplomat @ 93;
So, it is ‘sexist’ and ‘dangerous’ to state that sufficient alcohol may render a person incapable of providing informed, free consent? I really fail to see how recognising the problems caused by the sexual exploitation of severely inebriated women harms women, but I suppose the article is question will clarify matters…
*Checks link*
…Oh dear. Are you sure you want to associate yourself with the opinions expressed in this piece?
Let’s open with a joke, because apparently rape is funny all of a sudden…
Because mind-altering substances couldn’t possibly impair judgement or undermine consent in any way…
This is an almost wilfull misunderstanding of the point. There is a level of drunkenness beyond which a man cannot tell if a woman is merely drunk but still consenting, or is so inebriated that she is incapable of conveying consent or witholding it. In such a circumstance, the only reponsible course is to choose not to have sex with that person until consent or its absence is unambiguous, otherwise you risk becoming a rapist.
Becuase acknowledging that intoxicants may render consent opaque is so much worse than a mentality that women who drink and then get raped were ‘asking for it’…
Now Williams is comparing the recognition that alcohol may impair a woman’s ability to give consent to sexual congress to the significance of intoxication in establishing the legal responsibility for an act of murder. Doesn’t that strike you as just the tiniest bit ridiculous, Gunboat Diplomat? Talk about a case of comparing apples and pares…
No one is impugning the rationality of women. The law is intended to remove the ambiguity of consent created by intoxication that rapists exploit to try to claim that they had no way of knowing that their victims weren’t ‘into it’.
That is a spectacularly insensitive thing to write. I have no way of knowing if Williams has ever experienced any form of sexual assault or rape, but this casual dismissal of the significance of the violation of a woman’s body as insignificant when set against William’s ridiculous construct of a supposed assault on the legal standing of women is clearly going to be a triggering factor for rape victims. Williams is shadow-boxing against an imagined threat to the constitutional standing of woman, and in the process lightly waving away the very real trauma of rape victims. It’s disgusting.
He would only have committed such a criminal act if he had had sex with a woman who was so severely inebriated that she couldn’t provide consent. Even Williams admits that vindictive charges from women are unlikely, and yet she seems to accept the idea that the authorities are going to press ahead with some kind of prosecution even when the woman in question makes no complaint. How, exactly? Bedroom police? Cameras in every home, hotel room, vehicle etc? This Orwellian fantasy stretches credibility to the breaking point.
And now we have gone from issues of consent being obscured by inebriation to gender specific prohibition – for some reason. Don’t ask me how Williams got there, or why she thinks this laughable hypothetical is even pertinent.
Or maybe, just maybe, rape is far more common than most people are comfortable with. Refusing to accept the scale of the problem doesn’t make it go away.
Who is calling all men rapists? The most misandrist assumption I have seen in relation to this entire issue comes from Williams herself – contrary to her article, not all men have sex with very drunk women or women affected by other narcotics. There are plenty of men who would only consider having sex when the consent is free, informed and unambiguous. As for those men who do have sex with very heavily drunk women? Well, perhaps they need a little consciousness raising in regard to this issue – it is better to recieve clear consent from a woman in possession of her full faculties then risk raping a woman who may not be able to provide consent. Not only does this prevent misunderstanding, but it also removes the cover that rapists use to avoid prosecution.
There it is; ‘what about teh menz?’ If there is no consent, then it is rape. If a woman is incapable of providing consent, then there can be no consent, and it is still rape. The man’s recollection doesn’t change the fact that a woman who is too drunk to provide consent cannot have consented.
In any case, didn’t Williams herself accept that the liklihood of women vindictively pressing charges for no reason is low? So why is she so hung up on the possibility of such an unlikely event rather than trying to create a society that is safer for women because it doesn’t provide legal cover for rapists? I wonder if Williams is even aware of the UK rape conviction statistics – only 6% of reported rapes resulting in convictions hardly speaks of a system weighted against the accused, afterall…
Really? All men? So long as you limit yourself to having sex with women who are still compos mentis then I see no problem here. This is only an issue if you are the kind of PUA who specialises in drunk and vulnerable women, whereupon you are skirting the boundary of rape anyway. Is it really such a burden to wait until the woman can make her consent, or lack thereof, unambiguous? Last time I checked, I was able to think with my brain, not my penis, I don’t doubt that the same is true of most other men.
Held responsible for what? Getting raped? Victim-blaming is an ugly, but sadly common, phenomenon.
Yup, can’t have the law challenging male privilege and patriarchal social norms. I mean, isn’t it obvious that law exists to serve only a specific social elite? Membership of which naturally includes various requirements, the most important of which being the possession of a penis, apparently…
Well, there are always rape victims…
Nah, who am I kidding? Why should society care about them? They were obviously asking for it, afterall. Why get drunk otherwise…?
This is the subtext of Willaim’s article, so I ask again; Gunboat Diplomat, are you sure you want to associate yourself with the writings of this person?
“your posts seem to be mainly swearing and abuse with little content so I don’t think I will respond to them. ”
I have to say, bevwoodward it would be in your best interest to click on the links Cipher has given you. That derailing for dummies has misogynist arseholes like so many MRAs pegged down to a tee. Anti affirmitive action folks seem to use a lot of these tactics as well when race comes up in online discussions.
Two obvious problems.
1) Count cases of people being persuaded to have sex, being aggressively persuaded, being psychologically coerced, being physically bullied, doing it while drunk and suggestible, and being actually raped…and calling all of them ‘rape’.
2) The Shere Hite problem. Ask a million people whether something’s happened to them, and pretend positive responders have an equal motive to respond as negative.
Which one of those isn’t rape?
Yes, bitchez always lie.
Full of win.
FFS. Why even mention women in this context? Men who are too drunk can’t consent either. Are the laws stupid enough to make it specific?
…Oh. The UK. The place where rape can, by legal definition, only be committed by a penis. *headdesk*
I don’t see much wrong with the first item on the list ‘persuading people to have sex’ – I believe this is sometimes also know variously as dating, seduction, wooing, etc…
However, as for the others instances: if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck and rapes like a duck then you can call it what you like but it is still rape.
1. Coerced sex, by any means, is rape. What is so hard to understand about that? Do you find it hard to imagine an unimpaired, willing woman having sex with you?
2. It’s true. Admitting that you haven’t been raped bears no social stigma, while saying you have does.
Why would a man want to have sex with a “legless” woman? A woman that drunk can’t be anything but a semen receptical. If that’s all you want, for gods sake, go buy a big piece of cow’s liver. Consent will no longer be an issue, and think of all the money you save on booze, and cover charges at clubs and such.
Oh, getting into a woman’s pants, no matter how you get there, makes you feel like a big, strong, sexy man? Then you aren’t a big, strong, sexy man, so forget about it. Cow’s liver is very cheap if bought at a meat market in bulk.
I find it particularly terrifying that so.many.dudes apparently believe that, after a woman says no, coercing her to relent – which relies on the use of privilege and PUA-style tactics – is merely “dating, seduction, wooing, etc.”
Here’s my PSA for the day: Guys, romantics comedies are not a guidebook. The end.
All the other scouts are doing it with me, why not you?
Do you really want everyone in the pack to know that you’re the scaredy-cat kid who won’t have fun?
And I borkquoted. Sorry.
@postmodernslavepoet
Dating shouldn’t be about persuading, but a process of moving toward a mutual agreement. Persuading implies that one side wants something and the other doesn’t but could be convinced to give in if the first side comes up with a convincing enough argument. It’s a slimy and annoying thing to be hassled by someone you’ve already said no to because they think that they just have to ask more times and you’ll give in.
And if it rapes like a duck…well, let’s just say that I’m glad human genitalia have not been subject to the same selective pressures as ducks’ have.
Enthusiastic consent, don’t let your dick leave your pants without it!
bevwoodward sees:
complete alcohol/drug facilitated penetration 781,000
And thinks a reasonable response is:
Under the apparent impression that “alcohol/drug facilitated penetration” = “Candy is dandy but liquor is quicker.” 100% of the time, and it is impossible to rape a drunk woman.
Except where she wasn’t drunk, but somebody spiked her drink.
Or where she didn’t intend to get drunk, but a ‘friend’ or her date pressured her into drinking/drinking more/taking drugs.
Or where she did intend to go out, have a few drinks, and have some fun with some friends, and that was all.
Or where she does enjoy drunken hookups (her body, her choice), just not with that guy/not without a condom/not there/not then.
Even the strawwoman who goes out every night with the intention of getting blotto and having some sex with random strangers can still be raped. Nobody gets to decide that because she was drunk and hoping to get laid, that that means her body becomes public property.
If anypne with the slightest bit of empathy imagines being in the situation of waking up, unsure if you used protection, not remembering if you said no but knowing you wouldn’t have said yes– if you imagine that topped with the knowledge that if you say anything, chances are that it will be dismissed since you hooked up with a guy at a party before, didn’t you?– you were both drunk, weren’t you?– you had that short skirt on, didn’t you?–
I have never been in that situation, but I can imagine such a thing. If you put yourself in that person’s shoes, I don’t think you could any longer so casually and callously dismiss their experience as a “regretted hookup”.
Anyone who can then take a statistic that talks about people who were raped before the age of 18 and use that to dismiss them as probably being part of a “hookup culture”, probably doesn’t have a shred of empathy, though.
Anecdote time: my one experience relating to alcohol, regretted sex, and the under-eighteens came through circumventing certain rules around emergency contraception for the benefit of a younger sister’s fifteen year old friend.
She had been drinking, the other party was her boyfriend, and no protection had been used. She was terrified of 1. being pregnant and 2. her mother finding out. I didn’t press for further details at the time. If she had been raped, she would have been square in the middle of those statistics that bevwoodward and the like thinks are “misleading”.
If she had told me that she was raped, I know I would have tried to support her and find her whatever legal and medical assistance she needed.
The idea that there are people out there who wouldn’t do the same, who would say that it wasn’t really rape, because she’d been drinking, or because it was with her boyfriend, turns my stomach.
@111 Illuminata, Genie in the Beer Bottle
I agree entirely that coercing, (Coerce:- To compel by force, intimidation, or authority, especially without regard for individual desire or volition), a woman who has said ‘no’ to have sex is unacceptable. However, I see nothing wrong in persuading, (Persuade:- To induce to undertake a course of action or embrace a point of view by means of argument, reasoning, or entreaty), a person to have sex.
bevwoodwards got “dear muslima” syndrome.
For society and women in particular, bevwoodwards “lesser evils” are actually worse “in a way” because they are far more frequent than the big, bad stuff, yet it isn’t “reeeeally rape” in many people’s eyes. A larger net effect, plus the stigma of “it’s all your fault”.
I would actually be surprised if most people knew where their own laws stand on these issues… it’s certainly worrying that we are being told to be careful of the wrong things by society.
We certainly need much better education than we have been given on these issues and this survey is definitely a step in the right direction.
Now i need to join the others in the fetal position for a little while.
And that’s why you’re creepy. It’s not a game. You aren’t winning an argument.
I apologize for my comment showing posted at 8:51am. I should have included a trigger warning. It sure as hell triggered me. Sorry in so many ways for that.
I was going to preface this by stating that I don’t intend to get into a pedantic argument over a tangentially related matter, but screw it. I’ll argue.
It is possible to consent while totally wasted. I have written about this on another thread, but I can’t find the bloody thing. It is also possible to be incapable of consenting when drunk.
It’s always better to err on the safe side and not rape a person, however. If you can’t get consent, let alone enthusiastic consent, don’t do it.
It’s really that simple.
Apparently and unfortunately it’s not.
Postmodernslavepoet, seduction is a two way street. You’re not hypnotising a person with your charms so that they want to have sex with your independent of their actual will. When you have sex with someone it’s because they want it too. A consenting sexual partner isn’t having sex with your because you persuaded them to, in other words, it’s because they want to. You don’t have the kind of control over other people that you think you have. I think you’re confused about what consent actually is …and it’s creepy. You’re verging on pickup artist territory. Don’t go there.
Illuminata, thanx for the careful, calm deconstruction of that waste of bits.
But since we’re talking about GBD, who basically thinks that women are fuckable anthropomorphized coffeemugs, he probably doesn’t mind.
I find it funny that somebody in the UK, the country with the most fucked up libel laws on planet earth claims that men are defenseless against having their lives ruined by rape accusations.
Here’s a helpful primer for the trolls:
#1 thing that causes rape: Rapists.
There is no #2.
If you’re seriously arguing that it’s easier for a man to pressure a woman into sex – or just flat out rape her – than it is for a man to take ‘no’ as an answer, you have some serious issues with regarding women as independent human beings with equal rights. You also have some serious issues with regarding men as intelligent human beings who are capable of controlling their own actions.
I sincerely pity any human being who is unfortunate enough to have to deal with you IRL.
Why would you want to have sex with a woman who was so not into you that you had to beg and plead and cajole her into submission. I mean really–at least my hand won’t be disgusted with me in the morning.
Well, Re. BigDumbChimp, that’s true. I should have said, ‘It should be that simple.’
Yes, just like the mob can “persuade” you to part with shake-down money.
Enthusiastic consent takes away the gray area. Best for all involved.
Depressing post followed by depressing comment thread.
Our trio of apologists might have thought to read the report before commenting on its methodological weaknesses. The link was right there in the first paragraph.
This study does have methodological weaknesses (although not the ones imagined to exist by our apologists) because all studies have methodological weaknesses. Having read the report, I would say that this study is, despite a few avoidable flaws, about as good as evidence is going to get on the prevalence of sexual violence in the community. And as for the supposed blurring of the definition of rape, it is worth a look at Appendix C which actually lists the questions so you can see what was asked of respondents. They defined rape to include where someone “made you” have sex “when you were drunk, high, drugged, or passed out and unable to consent“, or when “pressured” to have sex by “using their authority over you, for example, your boss or your teacher?” In other words, they did not call it rape when someone had sex after a drink or slept with their boss unless their capacity to consent was impaired. This is not hard to understand.
It’s not a perfect study because it’s impossible to do a perfect study, especially on a subject like sexual violence — but when you have a good study like this one, the only justifiable reason for rejecting its findings is if you have better evidence to refer to. Do any of our apologists have a better study? What’s that? A 9 year old opinion article in the Guardian by an idiot who thinks that having sex when blind drunk (her words) is the normal course of human relations? A vaguely-remembered critique by Christina Hoff Summers on a completely different study? That’s your counter-evidence? You ought to be ashamed of yourselves.
@117: Why on Earth would anyone ever try to “persuade” someone to have sex?
Compared to an intense mutual attraction spiraling in towards a breathlessly anticipated sexual escapade, “oh, alright then” is nothing.
Don’t forget your porcupine on the way out
Please! Won’t anyone think of the porcupines!? I know they’re virtual but it’s got to be awful for them.
Marcus Ranum
Oh, it’s OK, they are deceased, we only use porcupines that have lived a happy long life and then died a peaceful death.
Believe me, it’s been damn hard getting an adequate supply lately
Am I correct in thinking that the piece quoted by GBD is missing a couple of fairly simple points here?
Perhaps – and this might be a controversial idea – a certain amount of legal asymmetry regarding an accused rapist and their presumed victim might just be in order.
Here’s a quiz for our readers who aren’t terminally stupid:
Are there any other circumstances under which an assent to sex is legally equivalent to non-consent?
If so, isn’t the quoted statement a blatant and asinine lie?
Yes. Age of consent. Other than that, no.
The secret answer to Anri’s last question is, ‘Yes.’
@chrislawson
Having sex while blind drunk is something the majority of young people experience in the British isles often several times and most of the time with no consequences other than embarressment. So in these islands it IS the normal course of human relations.
Zoe Williams article reflects and explains that social reality.
I quoted the article because her left wing liberal feminist perspective provides a nice counterpoint to the puritan feminist perspective held by many commenters on this blog who come out with such simplistic claptrap as ‘drunk people can’t give consent.’
You’ll be happy to hear there are other British feminist journalists who agree with this puritan perspective though. Try looking up Julie Bindel. Shes likes to argue that point. When shes not reminiscing about her anti-pornography demo’s in the 70’s or supporting laws which criminalise users of prostitution.
Sadly I barely have time to read never mind formulate a response to most of the posters. Perhaps I’ll get a chance over the weekend.
Perhaps that’s because the population of those islands contains too many pieces of shit like you, who pretend not to understand the simple concept that an incapacitated person cannot give consent.
Of course we have lots of them here as well.
One of the problems with the “drunk” consent issue that is often ignored is that there are lots of ways one can be ‘impaired’ – and generally society treats them as rape, as well. If one preys on someone who is severely retarded, for example, it is rape. If you give someone rohypnol and have sex with them when they’re passed out, it is rape. From that standpoint, giving someone so much alcohol that they’re impaired – is also rape.
I had a fling a few years ago with someone who enjoyed getting seriously wasted and making out (and sometimes, when the too-drunken flesh was willing, having sex) with me. I always made a point of asking “shall we give eachother consent now, before we get really really wasted? because you know how this is going to end up!” We’d laugh and enthusiastically agree that a sloppy-drunk fuck was where we were headed, then we’d pour some more wine and get down to it. I wouldn’t say that it’s a model of love-making (because there was one time I passed out a bit too soon…) but it seemed to me to dispell any doubts that either of us might have had. I mention this because a good passionate drunkenfucking can be pretty cool as long as nobody throws up at the wrong time. :)
kapitano @ 105;
Here you have just excluded the vast majority of scenarios that lead to rape as ‘no true rape’, so I have to ask; what is your definition of rape? With so much excluded, do you think that your definition really bears much resemblance to the experiences of rape victims?
When I look at all you would exclude from your ‘true rape’ definition, I find that every single thing you seek to categorise as not-rape is actually a common component of rape and rape culture. Talk of ‘persuading’ someone to have sex has been dealt with by other posters, but I think that Thomathy, now gayer and atheister @ 123 says it well;
Whre you dismiss ‘persuasion’ as something that could never result in rape, I would counter that emotional manipulation and psycholigical techniques aimed at the wearing down or resistance are actually very common means of securing sex without free consent, and so are a core element of rape culture.
As for ‘aggressive persuasion’, that could easily amount to harrasment or even intimidation, both of which are means of compelling someone to engage in sex without using force.
‘Psychological coercion’ would cover anything up to and including brainwashing, and yet you don’t think that this could eliminate consent to a sufficient degree to amount to rape? Why?
You mention physical bullying – the actual deployment of force and violence in order to secure sex – and yet you still distinguish this from ‘true’ rape. Your rape definition must be so narrow that it is amazing anything qualifies.
And then we get to the issue of inebriation. Tell me, why do you think that having sex with a person who is too drunk or otherwise incapacitated to provide informed consent should not be classed as rape? There is no consent, because there can be no consent when one party is so impaired. No consent = rape to most people, so why are you so invested in trying to rationalise this as something else?
As I have said, your definition of rape must be strange and narrow indeed, since all that would seem to satisfy your criteria would be the most stereotypical form of stranger rape – the hollywood-esque trench-coat wearing pervert springing upon a woman from the shadows of a park on a dark and stormy night before dragging her into the bushes to rape her and then tie her to some railway lines…
Don’t you see how a such narrow definition of rape contributes to a rape culture where women who are abused by spouses, family members, aquantainces and the like find it next to impossible to be taken seriously by the authorities?
Why presume dishonesty on the part of women rather than seeking to deal with the problem of rape culture?
Actually, this “man was drunk, too” argument doesn’t hold water, because in most countries it is a defense if you can claim to have been incapacitated by drugs (including alcohol). What that doesn’t mean is that the crime hasn’t happened.
To take the favourite drunk-driving example: You might have been to drunk to be fully responsible, but that doesn’t make the person who died in the car-crash alive again.
Whatever that woman is, she is no left-wing liberal feminist, the same way CHS isn’t a feminist.
Puritan? You have no idea what you’re saying. But that’s an old tactic: Label them as prudes, it means their argument is invalid.
Drunk people can’t give consent any more than they can drive and operate heavy machinery.
Tell me, if a drunk person is persuaded to sign over all their property in exchange for shares of a Peruvian goldmine, do you think the contract should still stand when they’re sober or should they have the right to re-adress this matter?
Which means what? That it’s OK to fuck a passed-out woman because she isn’t able to say no anymore?
Addendum to my previous comment: a good drunkenfuck is dangerous, in my mind, because you are legitimately at risk if your partner wakes up the next morning and says “OMG! What happened?!” That’s why you want to make sure you get consent while you’re still both sober enough to remember it afterward. (It’s the question of memory that makes hypnotic drugs like Rohypnol particularly problematic when it comes to drugged rape – it also interferes with the victim’s memory and the rapist may try to convince them they consented) The crucial point in all of this is that you’re playing with fire.
I’ve often felt, actually, that having sex is always “playing with fire” because no matter how it works out your partner can always accuse you of rape and the evidence is there. The simple way to do that is to not have sex with someone unless they’ve enthusiastically granted consent and you’re damn sure they’re not going to change their mind. Just in general, having sex with someone who might change their mind afterward – not a good idea.
With emphasis on the “most of the time” of course.
Who knew taking and giving out a popular date rape drug until you and you’re partner are physically sick and unable to even walk should be considered normal in Britain. I think i’ll stick with the puritans on this one, even if they may be accused of “simplifying” things. Also this matter is irrelevent to the contents of the survey given the questions asked (IMHO).
Now, back into the fetal position. I may even practice my rocking back and forth while i’m there.
GBD:
Citation needed.
Wow, citation really needed.
Strangely enough, this law is not in place to protect the people who were perfectly happy with the situation and therefore wouldn’t…
what’s the phrase?
Oh, yeah: press charges.
At one point in history, the normal course for being black in the western world was to be held as chattel. Legally.
I guess that makes it…
Moral?
Acceptable?
Hunky-dory?
or: D) None of the Above.
Please at least try to find some better arguments.
“I know because me and my friends screwed passed-out-drunk girls all the time and they were perfectly fine!”
I’m sure that a misogynist asshole like GB here is well qualified to determine whether a young woman who has just been raped is just suffering ’embarrassment’. After all, he was there! Often several times!
Die in a fire, you filthy rapist.
Why bother, as all you do is apologize for rapists.
I’m going back well over a decade to first year law school. And I’m not American.
So with that being said:
In a sexual assault trial, the accused *may* forward evidence that he/she believed that the complainant consented. Whether or not that is reasonable is a question of fact for the decider of fact. I’m sure there’s a tonne of case law.
BUT “belief in consent” is not a defence to a sexual assault charge where the accused’s belief arose from the accused’s self-induced intoxication, recklessness, wilful blindness, or if the accused did not take reasonable steps, in the circumstances known to the accused at the time, to ascertain that the complainant was consenting.
It least that was the law in Canada about 20 years ago. It may have changed.
Hope this adds something to the attack on rape apologists.
If I’m drunk I can “consent” to drive myself home, but it’s still illegal, and if I get caught I’m still going to be penalized for it.
OK, for the benefit of all you infantilizing feminazi liberals, here’s real rape:
That is “real rape”. Nothing else counts.
Gunboat Diplomat @ 136;
Firstly, I live in the UK, and I hadn’t noticed that this behaviour is as ubiquitous as you claim.
Secondly, even if such behaviour is as widespread as you say, what makes you think that the mere fact that a given behaviour is commonplace somehow also automatically makes it non-problematic and morally acceptable? Anri’s slavery example being an excellant case in point?
‘Left wing liberal feminist?’ She seemed more like a rape apologist to me. I also fail to see what you find so ‘puritan’ about the idea that a person who is severely intoxicated may not be able to offer informed consent, and that this ambiguity makes it irresponsible to have sex with them. Why risk rape, when it so easy to avoid the danger? Why not simply wait until the person in question is sober and their consent or otherwise is clear? Why is that so much to ask?
You say that the idea that the consent of a drunk person may be potentially ambiguous is ‘simplistic’, but you don’t offer any actual counter arguments. Rather than linking to an article that replicates so much nasty rape apologia, why don’t you put forward your own reasoning? Would you be comfortable having sex with a severely intoxicated person? If so, how could you be certain that they were still composed and clear-headed enough to offer genuinely free, informed and enthusiastic consent? And why would you choose to take this risk instead of waiting until they are sober and able to offer free, informed and enthusiastic consent, or alternatively seeking such consent ahead of time before they become inebriated as suggested by Marcus Ranum?
I guess I have been over pernickety in how I intended the use of ‘persuade’. I meant it the sense of ‘the positive book reviews persuaded me to but the novel’ or ‘The clarity of the argument persuaded me to re-evaluate my position’ rather than in the sense ‘the shotgun pointed at my head persuaded me to do as I was told’.
However, my semantic pedantics aside, let me be unequivocal about where I stand on this matter:
1. Rape is wrong.
2. Date rape – a weasel-worded phrase invented to make rape seem somehow less appalling – is wrong.
3. Gaining consent for sex by the use of physical, mental or financial coercion is wrong.
4. Gaining consent for sex by the threat of physical, mental or financial coercion is wrong.
5. Getting someone to have sex with you by trickery, fraud, lies, hypnotism, bamboozlement or other false pretences is wrong.
6. Having sex with someone unable to consent by reason of drugs, drink, illness, diminished capacity, etc… is wrong.
7. Irrespective of what the victim has eaten, drunk, said, worn or done, the person responsible for the rape is the rapist.
Sorry to have been creepy.
Isn’t it obvious? It’s because if you define rape so narrowly as to say ‘penetration without consent’ that makes him a rapist, and he doesn’t want to admit to being a rapist, so he has to change the definition to ‘penetration without consent, unless she’s too drunk to give consent, because obviously she wouldn’t have gotten that drunk if she didn’t mind having a stranger’s penis inside of her while she was unconscious. Obviously.’
Anuran #148, that says i think a lot about you, but very little about rape
“Presumably, the law will still have a problem with us if we commit a murder under the influence of alcohol…”
Yes.
As Giliell said @140, it is an established legal principle that one can be so drunk (or otherwise impaired) as to not be able to form intent. So, at some degree of intoxication, you can be found guilty of manslaughter while drunk, but not of murder.
AS & A Level Law, O’Connor, R v [1991] CA
Similarly, one commits rape while drunk only if not so impaired as to be incapable of intent: “Drunkenness was no defence unless it could be established that the accused at the time of committing rape was so drunk that he was incapable of forming the intent to commit it.” (same reference, Beard, DPP v (1920) HL)
And, you know what, bevwoodward? Women (and men) have the right to be drunk in public without being attacked!
I suppose that when a drunk collapsed on a park bench is beaten and robbed, it isn’t assault, theft, and battery. Because the drunk may have consented, but feel bad the next day and claim it was a crime.
ricardodivali, please recalibrate your sarcasm detector.
@postmodern
I see. So, someone tells you “No, I don’t want sex”, and you think it’s fine to ‘persuade’ them that their view of what they want to do (or rather, don’t want to do) with their body is wrong?
That’s what you’re doing – telling them their desire not to have sex is irrelevant compared to your need to stick your dick in something. You’re telling them that you reject their agency, and you’re substituting your own. Thanks for reminding women that we’re just sex toys with no right to refuse people access to our bodies. Ever.
Seriously – you’re comparing convincing someone to risk STDs and pregnancy to…convincing someone to spend a few bucks on a book? Really?
Marcus Ranum, your post at #141 is a painful exercise at arriving at the correct end point. I can’t help but feel you’re a little too paranoid about being falsely accused of rape. Not that you actually are, it just comes across that way.
Postmodernslavepoet, thanks for the clarification.
Rape apologists, you need better arguments. Repetition is boring for everyone.
Can we not, and I know it’s rich coming from me, get side tracked with discussions about the relative ability of drunk people to consent to sex (or anything)? It is possible for a drunk person to consent, even enthusiastically, to sex. It is also possible for a drunk person to be incapable of doing so. Finer points aside, if the person can’t consent or doesn’t consent, then it’s not even drunken sex you’re having with them, it’s just rape. This should not be so difficult.
@Anri #143
Yes drunken sex is totally comparable to slavery. Totally.
@Stevarious
Ah and finally the insulticomotron is completed. I’ve journeyed from being ‘on the borders of rape land’ to BEING an actual rapist – just by quoting a well known British feminist!
@Gilleill
Sure, because she doesn’t advocate YOUR brand of feminism. Well feminism has many sides beyond that presented here which is my point. A brief survey of her many articles written in one of the english languages most respected newspapers (the Guardian) over the years would prove otherwise.
Like I say though, read Julie Bindel instead. Probably much more up your alley.
One question: it’s been my experience that when men hit this point, they’re generally incapable of standing or doing much more than puking their guts out…or passing out. If they were that blitzed, wouldn’t they be incapable of maintaining an erection as well?
I’ve never seen someone manage to keep a boner while that drunk, but my experience with people who are that drunk is fairly limited.
Gunboat Diplomat:
This is a serious question and, to be perfectly fair, I will answer it also.
Have you ever had sexual congress with a person when either you, or the other person, is too drunk to be able to consent to sex?
Here is my answer: Yes.*
What is your answer?
—-
* I was ten years old and the one getting me drunk was a cubscout pack leader so, even sober, I could not legally give consent.
Oh, and postmodernslavepoet, you still don’t have the kind of control over people that you think you do.
Gunboat Rape Apologist #157
You’ve already shown you have no problems with getting women drunk enough to fuck them. Whether or not you’ve actually done that is moot.
The question as formulated is a little misleading to me (at least on first through third reading, I think I finally get it fourth time round…)
In the first instance are we to assume that the unable to consent applies in all circumstances, or just the last? I can’t help but feel this is where a ton of the rape apologetics are coming from, my first, second and indeed third reading of the question always lumped the “unable to consent” with the passed out. I infact had a whole “in minor defence of the rape apologists” piece written which I deleted when finally it dawned on me that the question should probably read unable to consent in all circumstances – in which case I have a feeling (perhaps being too generous) that all those accused of rape apologism above would actually back the fuck down on the issue – if not then yes, they’re horrible people, if so, they may just be reading the question the way I did the first three times, as I am convinced that consensual sex is completely possible when drunk or high (dependant on the degree to which one is drunk or high obviously) and thus in this context (ie taking the question in completely the wrong way) the criticism is valid but only to a question that wasn’t actually included in the survey.
Could have been clarified by having a made you clause in the first line – all the rest are unambiguous even if the question itself is unclear – as soon as someone is making you perform a sexual act then all but the most blinkered fool should agree it is rape. As things are it is sort of easy to fail at reading comprehension and come across as way more of an ass than you actually mean to be. I’m hoping not to come over as rape apologist here, if I fail in that respect then apologies, totally not what was intended. (perhaps the accused could comment on this to see if that was, indeed, where they’ve gone wrong – gives folk at least a chance to think “oh wow, holy shit that totally wasn’t what I was trying to say” and retreat with a bit of dignity from an indefensible position)
You’ve identified a type of rape (getting a woman too drunk to refuse your advances) as normalized behavior for your social group. You’ve clearly demonstrated that the only possible difference between you and an actual rapist (if there is any) is opportunity.
I’ve never even been in a situation in which I’ve worried, really. I think it’s important to have a thought-process that leads to why I want to make certain decisions, always – that way I don’t just try to get by on instinct.
The “correct end point” I completely agree with, but I don’t automatically take things as “correct” because I’m told they’re correct. I want to figure out why they’re correct because then I can defend my beliefs as something more than opinion.
In the case of my drunkenfucking friend, I really enjoyed it a great deal, and wanted my enjoyment of it to be unalloyed. The only way to do that was to think about it. It has always seemed to me that most of the problems people throw up as big moral dilemmas are fairly simple to dispatch if you deal with them rationally before everything gets complicated.
Interesting study. It’s interesting how close the relationship is between alcohol and bad consequences. As someone who was the victim of a drunk driver way back when I was ten years old, and whose life was irrevocably changed (maybe even destroyed in some senses)because of it, I am very sensitive to the observed effects of alcohol on society. I often wonder if alcohol is not the root of all evil. I don’t know what the statistics are, but I’ll bet there’s a good chance that alcohol is a contributing factor in most violent crimes.
You know what is the best thing about an unconcious (or autistic) woman? She can’t say “no”!
GBD:
In terms of being an example of an ‘acceptable’ social construct?
Yes.
Yes, it is, in fact.
Or, at least, I intend to stand by that until you actually, I dunno, make an argument against it.
“Nuh-UH!” isn’t an argument, by the way.
I’m assuming we’ll never actually see any citations for the other things you said in your post, and you’re hoping we’ll just forget about having asked.
Perhaps we should assume that you’ve got a fistfull of citations but just can’t seem to fit them through the series of tubes you’re using to post here?
A couple years ago I was working on a project with a young artist that I didn’t know very well. She got passed out on the couch (!) and I didn’t know why; I thought it might be dehydration but she was “out” and I had no idea if she was diabetic, on drugs, or what — so off to the ER we went in quite a hurry. I walked in carrying this young lady 1/2 my age, who was unconscious, and asked them to please help. At that point, the admitting nurse told the large orderly “keep an eye on him and don’t let him go until she comes to, and make sure we get a swab on her.” Niiiiiice. I have to say that even though I knew there was nothing wrong, sitting there with the orderly and a state trooper who just “happened” to show up, was pretty uncomfortable. (It turned out she was fine; it was a bit of dehydration and heat and that she’d been up all night the the night before partying) That situation was a serious reality check for me, though. I had, in fact, done everything right and they, legitimately, had to operate on the assumption that I had done something wrong.
Cupcake Diplomat, if you are unable to correctly type my nym, just use copy-paste.
Yes, there are many different brands of feminism. Yet none of them encompasses rape apologetics.
To use an example you might be able to understand: There are many forms of socialism, yet “Nationalsozialismus” isn’t one of them, no matter how often they use the word.
Some things are simply incompatible with the broadest definition of the term and therefore don’t fit under the umbrella, no matter how much the person holding those positions would like to style themselves as such.
BTW, you always claimed that you aren’t a feminist, so what makes you and expert on it?
Furthermore, read what Illuminata wrote, she deconstructed that bullshit in detail.
Talking about the English language, not your strongest point, is it?
Also, note: appeal to authority.
# 129 chrislawson, nice well reasoned take down of the rape apologists. Something I was far too mad to even attempt last night.
#146 scriabin, thank you for the legal clarification. It is most useful.
I do believe Anuran #148 was being sarcastic. I tend to pick up on sarcasm because it is my default state.
Now a quick clarification for all the scum sucking rape apologists who have shown up (fewer than I had feared, even if I dance a naked hoochie koochie on a table and drink until I pass out if you have sexual contact with without MY Consent it is RAPE! That clear enough for you?
The Ys @158:
Yes, one would think that was the case. I suspect that not many men have been acquitted using that defense.
Maybe the law should be changed to “unless it could be established that the rapist was so drunk he could not manage to keep a boner.”
Stevarious says:
Jesus Fucking Christ Stevarious, what game are you playing, out shithead the shithead? There are PLENTY of reasonable, intelligent things to say in response to these trolls, things that cut them down to size quite well indeed, yet you decide to make shit up. Why? Are you a fucking moron? Why the fuck do you need the strawman you wrote above? Look at Gregory Greenwood’s response at 149. He actually made a bunch of damn good points to the same comment! You should try that more often. Instead you just throw poop at the trolls while under the delusion you are helping.
Also, I must note that PZ himself, wrote a few posts which didn’t engage in ridiculous strawmen, but still cut down the trolls deeply. It can be done, and it is really fucking easy considering what they are saying here.
Why don’t you lead by example rather than whining like a tone troll. It would show real intellectual maturity on your part….
Err, yes, I explicitly addressed that possibility:
Correct to “anything like the majority of them”
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says:
Why rehash what has already been said? I don’t have such a massive ego that I need people to hear MY take when sufficient rebuttals were given a bunch of times already. Hell, what PZ said in a few short posts knocked down easily 75% of what the trolls have said.
Also, FUCK YOU. Whining? Tone troll? So I cannot criticize anyone on my side, ever? Even when they annoy me by going the lazy and extremely stupid route of pretending a troll said one thing, in order to engage in no thinking at all and knock the pretend statement down? That ain’t tone trolling you dumb fuck, think before you type.
Before they say no, possibly. After they say no, you’re wrong.
++
Gunboat Dipshit says this, evidently with a straight face, after the BDSM discussion? Because women who will talk semi-publically about their sexual kinks, but don’t want to be fucked when unconcious, are TOTALLY PURITIANS!!
LOL useless fucking moron.
Translation: I finally got the justification I needed to rape unconscious women!
WTRA@172 – I am fairly sure that Stevarious is referring to a previous thread on that very subject in which Gunboat Diplomat featured prominently. GBD has form.
You might want to take your own advice, Whiny Tone Troll. Why are you the arbiter of what a troll really said? Why are you the one who decides how someone else can respond to trolls? Why are you so convinced you’re right and everyone else is wrong? Why the fuck are you pretending to be on our side?
And, most importantly, why do you think we give a shit about what you think? No one fucking cares if you don’t like how someone says something. We’ve heard your trite, vapid, spineless bullshit already and it was rejected. Learn from this and STFU.
Anywhoo, Marcus Ranum @ 141 pretty much sums up the whole drunk hook up deal in one post. Not going to retread it, just comment on a little tiny part:
Good advice, for the people who engage in this kind of thing. I’d never do it unless in an already sex filled relationship with someone, and even then, probably not. But you raise good points Marcus about the dangers of this, even if both parties were ‘blind drunk’ and willing, as neither party actually could give consent at the time.
This doesn’t have much to do with the study PZ posted though.
julian:
That was a research review specifically on alcohol and sexual assault on college campuses, linked by Louis back in the Maybe social media will apply their rules consistently thread:
http://collegedrinkingprevention.gov/media/Journal/118-Abbey.pdf
and
Illuminata, Genie in the Beer Bottle says:
You stupid imbecile of epic proportions. The troll did not say “Me and my friends look for drunk women and have our way with them, hur hur hur.” He was talking about drunk hookups, where both parties were drunk and then did the deed. The two statements couldn’t be further apart, which is why I complained about the lazy and pathetic strawman attack, because it annoys me when someone on my side resorts to one at all, but especially in a situation like this, where the reality is already akin to shooting fish in a barrel. No need for that shit.
Let me ask you this, why are you defending someone on such a ridiculous level, when all I did was essentially say, don’t strawman? And yes, you are really fucking ridiculous. Observe:
Oh, now I am a rape apologist because I HATE STRAWMEN ATTACKS? Because rape apology is the opposite side from the majority here. What the FUCK is wrong with you, do you even think before you type? Retract your dumb ass remark please. Jesus Fucking Christ.
@Anri #167
No I don’t think I have anything to add to your formula: slavery = drunken sex. Gottit.
You’d be hard pressed to find anyone of any political perspective whose view of youth culture in these islands (with the possible exception of northern ireland which has a unique dynamic) differs fundamentally from that outlined by Zoe. Its pretty uncontroversial stuff and I’m sure you’re completely capable of educating yourselves if you were so inclined.
It does kind of amaze me you guys don’t seem to know anything about these islands culturally in relation to this topic. But I commented on the general cultural philistinism in another thread so i don’t want o be repeating myself
Anyway I’m off to cook dinner. We may consume an ENTIRE BOTTLE of wine but I’ll make sure I ask every step of the way ‘Is this ok?’ ‘Are you sure you’re not too drunk?.’ Perhaps I should get a signature before coitus? That would be real romantic.
Emrysmyrddin says:
Maybe, maybe not. If so the previous commentary should be mentioned, instead of quoting something from this thread and offering a “translation” which has nothing at all to do with what was quoted. That sort of mis-characterization / strawman / lying is done all the fucking time by creationists and other religious imbeciles and it pisses me off. Why should it get a pass when an atheist does it? But apparently, not only should it get a pass, but the person complaining about it, me, should be labeled a rape apologist because of it. Depressing.
But no sense in continuing with this point, so I’ll stop, right now. It is neither controversial or new. Strawmen bad. The end.
On what’s wrong with Christina Hoff Sommers:
http://fap.sagepub.com/content/12/4/491.short
http://lime.weeg.uiowa.edu/~c07b150/riorden_article.pdf
http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/hdh9/e-reserves/Rosser_-_Too_many_women_in_college_PDF.pdf
Sommer’s analysis is incompatible with most of what can be called feminism because it assumes a power differential which does not exist, in the service of supporting the power differentials which do. Feminism takes as a fundamental object for study the power differentials which have existed in history and at the current time; Sommer’s analysis does not do this, and cannot be said to be feminist because of it.
As usual, when reading the comment threads for this kind of subject, I vacillate between horror and gratefulness, for the willingness of the people commenting here to take on the absolute foulness which is rape apologia.
Gunboat Diplomat:
Have you ever had sexual congress with a person when either you, or the other person, is too drunk to be able to consent to sex?
I would say that rape and slavery actually are comparable.
Gunboat Diplomat says:
*facepalm.* Obvious troll is obvious.
Again, why are we talking about this? Two people getting more touchy feely the more they get shitfaced together is relevant to this study, how? Do you really think a significant percentage of reported rapes occur out of situations like this? Especially in your “culture” where people go out with the intent to do this? No, of course you don’t. Which means there is no sense wasting time talking to you.
The myth that “Consent is Hard”
@ bevwoodward – from your various comments I can only presume that no (sober) woman has ever agreed to let you have sex with her; probably even the hookers had to get drunk before they’d take your money.
To keep this really simple for you, if she slurs her words she’s too drunk to consent, if she stumbles when she tries to stand up she’s too drunk to consent, if she can’t walk in straight lines she’s too drunk to consent, if she’s snoring she’s too drunk to consent, if she’s unconscious she’s too drunk to consent. On the other hand in your case if she pukes on you she’s showing good taste. If there is any doubt at all assume she means no. I know this means you’re a serial rapist but them’s the facts.
Now go fuck yourself with a very dead and very smelly porcupine – twice!
ricardodivali says:
>Anuran #148, that says i think a lot about you, but
>very little about rape
Mostly what it says is that your ability to detect sarcasm needs to be reviewed.
OT, but this looks strangely familiar…..
Oh, let me count the ways bevwoodward blames victims and excuses rapists:
“She was drinking. It’s her fault that a man ‘took advantage’ of her. Women should be teetotalers because it’s their fault if a man slips a roofie into their beer.”
“She wanted a hook-up. Naughty slut. She’s probably lying because now her ‘virtue’ is gone.”
“The poor menz can’t control their hormones and just get ‘carried away.'”
“Only strangers in the bushes are rapists. If a woman goes out on a date with a guy who ‘gets fresh,’ that’s not really rape.”
“Anything short of PIV rape is no big deal and nobody should care about it.”
“She should have said no, because women exist in default state of consent.”
“Victims of childhood rape probably send out ‘rape me’ signals that the poor rapists are helpless to resist.”
“If a woman doesn’t identify her experience as rape, she can’t have been raped, despite the gaslighting society does to women to convince them they weren’t victimized.”
Plus the aforementioned tone trolling and questioning the “critical thinking” skills of those who tell you off.
Also:
“I’m just asking questions!”
You are a disgusting individual who thinks that using “polite” words makes you better than bluntly spoken people who don’t apologize for oppressive behavior. Not surprising, since you’re evidently a Christina Hoff Somers fan.
You, too, are an asshole, Kapitano.
I always wonder, when people like these two and GBD come into these threads, how many women they’ve raped. Of course, “bev” might be a woman, who thinks her magical thinking will keep her safe. Or maybe “she’s” just another MRA who thinks that spouting misogyny under a female handle makes it credible.
Postmodernslavepoet: There’s nothing sexy or erotic about a man who wants to use me as a masturbatory tool and doesn’t really care whether I’m into it or not. “Argument” doesn’t come into it. You’re supposed to respect your partner’s wishes to not have sex, and she isn’t obliged to justify them to you on the basis of “reason.” You sound like you’re more intersted in “winning” “sex” “from” a woman than you are in having a mutually respectful relationship or even a mutually respectful fling with one.
Jasonmartin99, I’m sorry for what happened to you, but, no, alcohol is not “the root of all evil.” Beer, wine, and liquor, when used responsibly, are enjoyable accoutrements to life. People who abuse them are responsible for any reprehensible acts they commit.
Marcus, #168: You can’t take that kind of incident personally. The ER personnel didn’t know you from Adam.
Wishful Thinking Rules All, you whine and it’s annoying.
Also, you must be incapable of nuance. What do you infer is meant when the troll, who is a rape apologist, brings up a culture of casual drunken hooking up as a defense against the inclusion of drunkenness in rape statistics? A reasonable inference is that the troll isn’t talking about a culture where consent is had, but about a culture where there are ‘grey areas’ and maybe wherein being drunk amounts to consent.
That’s not an argument, it’s not a strawman. It’s Stevarious restating what he infers the troll to have said. And it’s consistent with what this troll has said or has effectively said in the past. If you’re going to be pedantic and concerned, you can hardly do better.
Too bad you aren’t sensitive to what the actual topic and relevant factors are.
Trigger warning.
Fuck you. I was in horrific pain, and had no pain medicine, so I got high on some pot at my boyfriend’s house and then he was planning to drive me to urgent care in the morning. He was completely sober, I was out of my mind high, but I thought I was safe because I was, you know, with my boyfriend at his house and had been high with him before. I was not intoxicated in a public space, I was not having a hookup I merely regretted. I fell into a drug induced sleep, and was woken up by him raping me. I was unable to move, talk, or open my eyes. Maybe he would have stopped if I had been able to tell him no, but maybe not. I don’t know. I drifted in and out of consciousness and eventually when I woke up again it was morning. But apparently my rape doesn’t count for your statistics, because your friends would never be stupid enough to be intoxicated near a rapist.
end trigger warning.
This one did.
Sorta over and over.
Y’might wanna recalibrate your use of the word “autistic,” among other things.
I get that this might have been dark, dark sarcasm, which I’m hoping it is, but here you are anyway.
Funny jokes, y’all.
—
Wishful Thinking Rules All, Gunboat Diplomat has a posting history that does make it seem fair to translate his words in that way. He’s also a deliberately oblivious piece of shit who admits to slinging creepy sexual comments at other posters as a “defense mechanism.”
—
GD doesn’t read about personal experiences, Illuminata ^_^ It would break his happy little oblivious bubble of pompous pseudorationality. What were you thinking? That your actual words and experiences might be relevant to a discussion of, well, you? Shh, the menz are talking.
Sex without consent is rape.
I think that one can accept this fact and still wonder about how this definition fits in — not empirically or morally, but operationally — with the effects of alcohol and drug use.
You can see this in the way people feel compelled to parse various levels of drunkenness: “blind drunk” or “completely drunk,” “legally drunk,” or “a little bit drunk.” Same goes for levels of being high.
People add these modifiers, it seems, because there does seem to be a need to figure out when exactly the ability to consent disappears. It seems that, for many (including the OP), just saying “drunk” isn’t enough.
Let me suggest why by (as others have done) asking these questions:
Have any of you EVER had sex while you were drunk or high? Have you EVER had sex with anyone who was drunk or high, regardless of your own state of mind?
If you answered YES to either, it seems appropriate to ask if that means (1) you have been raped, (2) you have committed rape, or (3) both.
Did the sheer fact of your drunkenness — regardless of your estimate of your faculties, or any previous pre-drunken decisions (now nullified by your current intoxication) — put all your subsequent sexual activity in the realm of rape?
The CDC question implies that it did:
Does “unable to consent” refer to a certain level of drunkenness (“drunk [to the extent that you were] unable to consent…”)?
Or does it define drunkenness outright (i.e., “drunk…and [therefore] unable to consent”)?
If you accept the latter reading and definition, then ALL your drunk sex falls into some category of rape. ALL your stoned sex falls into some category of rape.
And if you are a man, this makes it highly likely that you are a rapist.
Would anyone who has ever had sex while drunk or high like to explain why you are not a victim or perpetrator or rape?
Ditto. Quit criticizing us on tone. Period. You know you will be called out on it, so you think before you type anything that sounds like you are criticizing our tone. And lead by example with snark, if you want to be seen as a leader, not a critic. Critics have permanent reservations for porcupines.
Plenty of typos above, I’m sure, but here’s one fix, from the final sentence:
“victim or perpetrator OF rape.”
You ASSUME that’s what he’s saying because you have an unending need to derail every conversation about women’s issues. (Or do you do this on other types of threads too)?
If you were actually an ally, finding out why people are reacting as they are to him would have been your first move. As we all know now, all you care about is derailing yet another thread to whine and complain about how no one obeys you.
Given what this same person has said about women before, I reject your assumptions about what he “really” means, you useless sack of whiny shit.
Why are you so convinced it’s a strawman? Why won’t you listen to what anyone else is saying? Why are you so convinced you’re right and everyone else is wrong? Why is it so fucking hard to accept that people disagree with your chickenshit argument and have rejected it?
Jump off a fucking bridge, lying coward. I didn’t call you anything. And I absolutely will not retract, but will instead double down. Whiny, childish, crybaby tone trolls who derail every fucking thread about women’s issues with their pedantic, vapid and repeatedly rejected tone trolling are NOT ALLIES.
You don’t need to be an explicit rape-apologist like Gunboat Dipshit. Your complete inability to listen, and to stop trolling each thread with your rejected arguments makes it clear you’re not an ally.
Your argument has been rejected multiple times on multiple threads now. To continue repeating it is obvious trolling. And more evidence that you’re not on our side.
Gunboat – what’s the harm in drilling into people the idea that when you’re drunk, you don’t have sex? People get totally shitface drunk all the time and manage to remember that they shouldn’t drive; same should be true of sex. The worst that can happen then is that you say to that tipsy sexy woman with you “sorry, but I’m too drunk to figure out if sex is a good idea right now and I won’t do something either of us will regret”.
Seriously. If we spent half as much effort linking drinking with not having sex that we do drinking with not driving, you wouldn’t have anything to dissemble about, would you?
psattler – I made a similar (albeit rambling) point above, although came to the conclusion that the CDC question should be parsed such that in any of the given situations (drunk, high, drugged, passed out) one was unable to consent. Rather than it being only in the passed out.
When read this way questions of degree go away. The degree is implied in the question (unable to consent, which while possibly variable from individual to individual certainly excludes all instances of drunken or stoned sex from the category of rape) – ambiguously worded perhaps, particularly for lazy readers such as myself, but makes sense when you look at it that way.
LOL my mistake. I’m not male, but I have been raped, therefore I’m automatically wrong about everything. Plus, I was probably asking for it. You know how bitchez lie.
Is the Whiny Tone Troll a dude too? The constant need to tell women to shut up, be nice is telling. As are claims of being an ally while doing everything BUT being an ally.
Those survey statistics include me. It was an acquaintance. I was 8 when it began. I’m 37 now. It still affects me tremendously.
Reading through the report, I’m struck by a couple of initial thoughts:
1. Appalling. Just utterly appalling. I feel awful knowing so many others have experienced this. How can it be so prevalent, yet at the same time such a social stigma for the victims?
2. Contrary to what I’ve felt for the past 38 years, I’m far from alone. While I don’t find joy in this, and I would never wish it on anyone, there is some measure of relief in knowing I’m not the only one.
I have always known there are others out there, but I’ve never known how many. In all my years, I can count on one hand the number of people I’ve met who admit to, let alone discuss, being victims. I can’t begin to describe the isolation I’ve felt, or the emotional/psychological burden of trying to avoid the stigma.
Damn. I’m really at a loss for words, and perhaps I should allow more time to digest this information before commenting further.
Oh and rape apologists:
Go fuck yourselves.
Erm, above when I say “all instances” I think I should have said “some instances” or at least explained a little better, as what came out looks like rape apology plain and simple. I was thinking that it meant you can’t simply categorize all drunk sex as rape, rather than you can’t categorize any instance of drunk sex as rape…. (which clearly you can)
You Know What Consent Looks Like
Haley’s Comet @ #196: I’m so sorry that happened to you. *supportive solidarity fistbumps offered*
I’ve been drunk enough to only be able to mutter about repelling dust while hiding under a coat. I’ve made out while drunk with people I barely knew. I’ve danced on a bar in my underwear. I’ve hung out in public wearing only a hat, a skirt that barely covered my ass and a pair of shoes. I’ve passed out in bed while absolutely trashed with my partners. I’ve also been raped, repeatedly. During none of the previous examples of “bad” behaviour, actually. Because the factor that led to my rape(s)? Being in the presence of a rapist. Period.
Seriously, why do these apologist assholes insist that grudging, intoxicated, not-really-anything-like consent “sex” is such a vital thing to fight for? Oh wait, it’s because they don’t give a shit about consent at all, they just really like knowing where the edges of what they’ll get away with lie so they can prowl there.
Was raped by an intoxicated man once. I wasn’t intoxicated. I was, however, held down. Well, actually, more thrown down, over and over. (This was, for those keeping track at home, the first time I was raped by the boyfriend who, under other circumstances, just refused to stop.) You can see HC above explaining what happened to her while she was intoxicated. Please stop acting like these are hypothetical situations, all right? You’re talking about severely traumatic experiences here. If you’re concerned about trying to draw a line for when it’s okay to have sex with an intoxicated person, just don’t do that. If you can’t tell whether someone’s capable of consenting, don’t have sex with them. As someone pointed out above, the worst case scenario if you don’t have sex with them is that you both missed out on some nice consensual sex. If you do, the worst case scenario is that you’re a rapist and they’re raped.
—
Active Margin, welcome, and thanks for sharing your experience. I’m sorry that happened to you and I’m sorry it’s been so isolating for you. You’ll find, often to your horror and depression, that you’re far from alone within the Horde. There are a lot of us here.
Hi Ewan,
I agree with your reading — or maybe your re-wording — which takes out the levels of degree and makes the definition absolute.
With that re-wording, drunk sex = rape, high sex = rape.
But I can also see why this might make many people uncomfortable, especially when they think about their own actions or potential actions. (This is, of course, because we are the worst judges of our own states of intoxication — and are so because of that intoxication.)
Thanks for your reply. I’m sorry I forgot to mention your earlier post by name.
Peter
Ok, on the slim chance that you’re actually as stupid as you’re proudly pretending to be, I’ll go slow and use little words:
You seemed to say that the “normal course” for youth in your land was to have multiple sex experiences while drunk. I pointed out that a “normal course” for people with dark skins was slavery.
Smart people realized that I was using the latter as an example of why making arguments from the “normal course” of things is a bad idea. Even people of average intelligence, like me, figured that out. I think you did too, but perhaps you can convince me you’re dumb rather than dishonest (to be honest, you’re doing pretty well on this so far).
Your call.
To put it more succucently: “No.”
To expand on the above answer: “Nah, I don’t have any references for my claims, but hell if I’ll back down now.”
I’d suggest you open the evening with the following:
“Hey, look, I’m gonna try to get you drunk, then fuck you when you’re too blitzed to know what you’re doing. I might get drunk too, of course. How’s that sound?”
If your partner laughs it off, keep a straight face and insist that’s your plan for the evening.
See what the reaction is if you keep at it long enough to convince your partner you’re not kidding. Because that’s what we’re discussing here – all except for the warning, of course.
Actually, you’re still reading it wrong. There isn’t a “therefore” in there. If they had just equated drunk sex with rape, they wouldn’t have needed to say “and unable to consent.”
LOL @ Illuminata. You are an absurd and ridiculous person, who suffers from some weird kind of “us versus them” mentality, making you incapable of reacting with any sense to anything. Yes, tell me to kill myself because I first complained about a response and contrasted it with a much better, and useful, actually substantive response. Speaking of substantive responses, let’s see:
psattler says:
Indeed. Yes to first question, yes to the second (although I shared their state at the time). Did we have consent? Well there was an understanding before hand on the account of the relationship. Also I don’t think I’ve ever been drunk enough… sorry, I never have had sex while drunk enough to lack consent, and neither has any partner I’ve had. Ditto with being high.
But you raise a good (and really obvious I would hope to everyone involved) point – there are levels of drunkenness. Hard to say exactly where consent is possible and where it is not. What Pteryxx quoted at 189 is pretty much perfect on this point, and in a sane world, would end this tangent.
Just Say No? The Use of Conversation Analysis In Developing A Feminist Perspective On Sexual Refusal
I suggest you stop this shit right now, Wishful Thinking Rules All. You’re going to get your ass handed to you.
But we live in this world. And in this world, any discussion of the horror of rape in an online forum will, with a probability approaching 1, have someone claiming that rapes committed when the victim is drunk or high don’t count, to be followed by a lively and sickening discussion of just how drunk a woman has to be for it to actually count. If neither one of you can give enthusiastic consent, it may be rape and should therefore be avoided like the clap. We know that there are levels of drunkenness. Arguing over how drunk someone has to be before it is actually rape is missing the point completely! No enthusiastic consent should mean no sex.
What the fuck is wrong with this world?
Pteryxx @ 208:
Your copy / paste jobs are made of win! Very nice!
Do you have a collection of those or are you tracking them down right now?
No one is saying that having a few drinks and getting your freak on is automatically rape. Consent is the issue. What we are saying is that plying someone with drink in order to lower their ability to refuse you, or fight you off, is rape. Engaging in sexual acts with someone unconscious from intoxication is rape. Drugging someone’s drink in order to render them helpless so you can do what you want is rape.
That said, any level of diminished capacity has the potential for becoming a rapey situation. For example, can someone be pulled over for driving drunk and use their level of drunkenness as an excuse as to why that’s not really a crime, this time?
Assuming neuro-typical status: Is someone who’s been drinking a good judge of non-verbal cues? Do drunk people never overestimate their tolerance, their abilities, or how much other people are enjoying their antics?
Once again, having a few drinks and getting busy with someone, including a total stranger, is not an issue. Getting smashingly drunk and hooking up with someone isn’t rape. ASSUMING CONSENT.
Another question: Given a situation like Mel Gibson – where someone very intoxicated gets in brawls with cops, shouts anti-semetic and misogynistic slurs, etc. – do you think this is his real personality coming up due to the lowered inhibitions or do you think alcohol is a demon that makes people do things?
Brother Ogvorbis:
Indeed!
:( Many things. But considering all the rapists and wannabe rapists out there, and the anonymity of the internet, it unfortunately is not surprising that apologists spring up in these threads.
Actually no, with my rewording each has the qualifier “and unable to consent” which I think is the defining piece.
Drunk/high sex may not be rape. Drunk/high sex where you are unable to consent absolutely is rape. Note the question doesn’t try and quantify what being able or unable to consent is – this is only quantifiable from the perspective of the person who either is, or is not, capable of consenting. The question, taken that way, shouldn’t be generating any false positives which would inflate the numbers. The numbers are as despicably shitty as reported.
Thanks Wishful Thinking – I do have a collection of references (and, by now, I can google Stephanie Zvan’s “Myth that Consent is Hard” and Harriet Jacob’s “You know what consent looks like” from memory) because this same conversation’s been going on for yeeeears. I’m just too busy atm to reply in depth.
This is from Harriet’s piece also:
LOL my goodness you are a pathetic crybaby. But thank you for proving me right. I do like being right.
You have avoided all of my points in order to pout and cry about tone. You started the insults and then whine and cry when you get it back. You have done nothing but troll. You do nothing be derail every thread about these issues with your obsessive need to tell women – rape survivors, no less – to shut up, be nice. Your delusions about how useful and substantive your posts are is hilarious, in a sad, dark way.
The blog owner has warned you about your behavior before. You’ve been threatened with banning. Have I? Do you see anyone here telling me to STFU, as they have told you multiple times? Do you see anyone whining and pouting about insults apart from you?
If anything can sink through that hoover dam thick skull, learn from this. Or, jump off a bridge.
@Wishful Thinking Rules All
Wow, I don’t think you’re an apologist but you sure aren’t convincing me I’m wrong here.
Are you reading the same thread as me? First, GB insists that there is no difference between having sex with a woman when her inhibitions are lowered because of a little drinking, and having ‘sex’ with a woman who is too drunk to give ANY consent. Then he claims that ‘sex’ with women who were too drunk to consent was common to everyone in his social circle when he was of a certain age. Sounds like a tacit admission of rape to me, except that he obvious defines rape differently than I. Do you feel differently because you interpret his comments differently, or because you disagree with me about the definition of rape?
(Also, you could take a look at this earlier thread where GB denies the existence of rape culture and insists that the low conviction rate for rapists is evidence that most cries of “Rape!” are false accusations.
Or don’t.)
And it happens Every. Single. Time. Its like Rape-Apologetics HQ has a bat signal. Rape is being discussed without victim-blaming! ATTACK!!
Anuran:
Anuran, let me introduce you to my friend Poe. I will then point you to bevwoodward and his “brilliant” commentary on what HE thinks rape is. Trust me, he NEEDS no parody.
I will then point out that drive by shittings are pretty common here and that unlike the regulars, i don’t know you from adam… and lets face it, this is a touchy subject. Are you really surprised your “comical” rape comment, left someone cold?
Yes it did cross my mind it might be sarcasm. But that goes for every raving loony, apologist and troll on here.
Stevarious – now, now don’t go pointing out how Whiny Tone Troll engages in derailing and dismissive rape-apologetics just to tell the bitchez to shut up, be nice. Just look at the three very recent posts wherein he pays mealymouthed lip service to how bad this all is! He’s a total ally. For realz.
psattler,
I think that question is one that needs to be considered most carefully by all of us who use alcohol and also maintain an active sex life.
I know that there have been many times when I and my partner have been drinking where we have not had sex because of the effects of alcohol. Whether because alcohol has led to distraction, over indulgence, exacerbation of prior fatigue or illness, or just outright passing out alcohol has prevented more sex that might have been than any other incidental aspect of our relationship. But that doesn’t change that we have engaged in sexy times quite often while we were both drinking.
I would note that our sexual relationship was four years old before either of us took any interest in recreational substances, we had already navigated to a great deal of comfort in discussing what we like, what we don’t, and when we would engage in those things that we both wanted to do. We had a vocabulary that while not erasing the added risk of alcohol, certainly made it less frightening for either of us to drink and fuck and so we did.
That I can sit here and claim we have never had a day after where one of us said: “You took advantage of me.” is not an argument in favour of people having drunk sex. It’s at best an example that some things we would be better off not doing don’t always result in the same outcome. As a corollary, just because something sometimes has a positive outcome, at least in the view of those who were directly involved, does not mean it is therefor acceptable.
I do think there is a great deal of latitude available in having sex while drinking, I think that many people can have alcohol in their system and still have sex that is consensual. What I don’t think is that when evaluating someone who they are interested in including in their sexy time that people can tell innately or even with implicit social training those who are okay from those who have had too much to drink. The line is fuzzy and as such needs to be dealt with before people touch a drop. (I would add that the line is not so fuzzy in the other direction, most people would have no difficulty in determining a point at which any person is not capable of consent and this is used by serial rapists to manipulate their victims while pretending to hide on the other end of the fuzzy spectrum.)
This needs to be explicit, maybe a two drink rule akin to drunk driving rules of thumb. Yes it’s not a perfect analog, but the idea has some utility: set people up with a script where they don’t accept consent from people who they wouldn’t accept a drive from. We can do better. What matters to me is that we break this tarnished social idea because of the damage that it has done, rather than maintaining it because of the times it did nothing or more horrifically because we think it necessary to have the times when it was good.
Comment by Wishful Thinking Rules All blocked. [unkill][show comment]
Fuck off and die, tone troll.
@39 Jamlescole
If I had my druthers, this absolutely would be counted as rape. When my ex partner spent a whole day harassing me to have sex with him, my choices were to submit, or to physically fight back. As he is 6’2″ and a brown belt in Tae kwon do I would have been most certainly physically harmed by the second option. I submitted to the first, and then left the house as soon as I was able. As my understood definition of rape is unwanted sexual penetration or contact, I don’t see how coerced sex could be anything but rape. Apparently, however, because he didn’t ‘verbally threaten’ me, the police couldn’t charge him. fml, if I’d known that I would get PTSD, I would have fought back, if for no other reason than the resulting physical harms to my body would have at least been a chargable offence. bevwoodward can get herself raped and then complain about how we are too hard on the asshole shitheads who think that a little rape is ok. Oh wait, that’s not a nice thing to say. . . oh well, today I don’t give a fuck.
Oh, in case it hasn’t been said elsewhere here today: If you want to prevent rape, DON’T RAPE ANYONE!!! There you go, simple, easy to understand, short and sweet rape prevention tip. You’re welcome.
Ladyh,
Because hurt isn’t real until it shows in pictures. I hate this idea.
I am so sorry this sort of thing happens at all, let alone that it is so common, and I hope you have people to lean on about it. Thank you for putting a face on that idea, thank you for sharing that so more of us can understand how horrible this is.
To Wishful Thinking and anyone else who feels the need to defend the disgusting excuse for a human being that is GB.
I suggest you go read the MRAs are almost as hilarious as creationists thread where he brags that he is a proud rapist of the get her intoxicated so she can’t resist variety.
I’ll repeat what I said last time. My take is that Gunboat Diplomat is a mind rapist troll. He likes upsetting people who are vulnerable and bullying victims or the like because they give an emotional response that satisfies some sexual or egotistical need to violate someone. It’s the net equivalent of a heavy phone breather.
ING: Could it be both/and?
++
ladyh42: For what it’s worth, I totally get it. I went through a very similar situation. My ex’s favorite method of coercion was the “taming of the shrew” approach – deliberately keeping me awake (with screaming fits, tantrums, verbal abuse and emotional blackmail) on weeknights if I didn’t want to have sex, so that I would be forced to give in or not get any sleep, which would potentially risk my job. Didn’t matter if I was sick, exhausted, on the rag, etc. All that matter is that he wasn’t getting what he wanted when he wanted it, and I was a horrible, terrible person for “making [him] work for it”.
Physical evidence means fuck-all sometimes too. Police didn’t help me either and I had two broken teeth from the uppercut he delivered to my jaw. Police are bloody worthless.
Dhorvath, OM:
I wish I had time to respond as fully as your comment deserves.
Right now, though, I will have to limit myself to a “thank you” for such an open, honest, and thoughtful reply.
That closing sentence, “We can do better,” caught me off-guard in its simple power.
Best, Peter
WishfulThinkingRulesAll is an annoying tone troll.
I agree with Ing, GDB is a victimizer, nothing more. He has already admitted that he WOULD rape somebody (although he wouldn’t call it rape, just like many rapists). Whether he has or not is immaterial.
Attitudes like GDB’s are precisely why a serial rapist with ten separate accusers can still avoid being convicted of rape. It wasn’t that the jury thought he didn’t do it. It was that alcohol was involved. And the jury thought that since there was alcohol, the women have consented and then changed their minds. Or lied. Or something. Whatever happened to those ten women wasn’t rape. Police estimate that the perpetrator may in fact have committed over 50 rapes over the years. But because he used alcohol to rape, he wasn’t convicted of rape.
THIS IS YOUR FAULT, RAPE APOLOGISTS.
Pteryxx says:
Nice. When I get home I am going to bookmark it and save it to boot. That shit is golden.
GBD is still as dishonest as ever.
Hey, GBD, why don’t you accuse all the rape survivors trying to share with you how their rapist slowly broke them down of trying to guilt you into agree with them and then go on to accuse everyone of minimizing the ‘real trauma of real rape victims.’
Here is what I see as the problem here:
There is definitely such a thing as “too drunk to give consent”. There is definitely such a thing as “able to give consent while drunk”. The line between the two is not defined, and varies greatly not only from person to person, but probably from situation to situation.
Also, I do think it’s not quite right to say “x% of women have been raped”, and include attempted rapes in this statistic. If you said “this many people have either been raped or people have attempted to rape them”, it would be more accurate. The statistic is still unacceptable, either way. 1 in 1000000 people being raped would still be too many. It just gives people less to argue about.
Nah. He’s more likely to accuse everyone of minimizing the trauma inflicted on poor innocent men who are falsely accused of rape. You know, like Julian Assange and Dominique Strauss-Khan (whose life is TOTALLY ruined now!).
Or accuse us of trying to emotionally manipulate him, IIRC.
O_o this one’s a keeper. From SallyStrange’s link at #237:
(emphasis mine)
@sw
there’s nothing to argue about now. Do you think attempted murders and attempted robberies should be considered in an entirely different category from completed murders and robberies?
@SW
The survey measures sexual violence and defines rape as:
Attempted forced penetration does count as rape, please don’t try to claim it’s a grey area.
Apologies if someone has already mentioned this, but I’d suggest that the same men who can’t fathom having sex with a sober consenting woman are the very same men who hate women, which is sort of what landed them in the first category to begin with. “Of course I get women drunk before having sex with them”, they’d say, “How else am I supposed to make it happen?” Thus all the rationalizations of why it’s really the victims fault, and why they act like counting such acts as rape amounts to counting ALL sex as rape.
More excerpts from SallyStrange’s link:
…what
—
Stereotypes? Stereotypes, after excluding actual experienced witnesses or jurors? Frail, crying, damaged women are MORE CREDIBLE? When TRAINED SOLDIERS (male or female) get raped by non-strangers – their own comrades – TOO??
…FFFFFFF
@julian and Tethys
I do think that attempted murders and robberies shouldn’t be included if you’re listing the number of murders and robberies. If someone states a statistic “5000 people were murdered last year”, and upon reading the source I find that 3500 people were murdered and 1500 people had attempts made on their lives but survived, I would say that the first stated statistic was, at least, misleading. I’m not saying the new statistic would be acceptable, or that attempted murder is OK or not as bad as murder. Only that the statement, as it stands, does not seem to be a fair representation of the statistics.
I don’t think that attempted rape counts as rape. I think it’s wrong, should be and is illegal, and it disgusts me. Rape is not OK, and attempting it is morally repugnant. But I don’t think saying that attempted rape *is* rape is correct. I am not trying to lessen it, I have a huge amount of sympathy for both those who have been raped and those who have had rape attempted on them.
To add to my post @146, the (maybe old) Canadian law was/is:
There is no consent by the complainant where:
1. it given by another person; or
2. the complainant is incapable of consenting (obviously includes the booze/drug issues); or
3. accused induces complainant to engage in the activity by abusing a position of trust, power or authority; or
4. complainant expresses, by words or conduct, a lack of agreement to engage in the activity; or
5. the complainant, having consented to engage in the activity, expresses, by words or conduct, a lack of agreement to contiue to engage in the activity.
So, combine any of the above with my post about where belief by accused in the consent being given is not a defence, and, at law, you have rape.
@sw
But isn’t the damage already done? Those more knowledgeable than I, please correct me if I’m wrong here but, don’t sexual molestation and assault and rape tend to have similar impacts on survivors? With theft or murder a failure results in the person keeping their belongings or life, whereas with a failed rape attempt the emotional and mental trauma is very much there.
And besides, not including cases where a crime was attempted but thwarted seems equally dishonest especially in the case of attempts on someone’s well being. It creates an illusion of safety that isn’t present by skewing our threat assessment.
The survey also has this statistic for sexual violence other than rape which includes coercion, unwanted sexual contact, and non-contact sexual experiences.
The study defined the above terms as:
Nearly 1 in 2 women!
I wasn’t expecting quite so much willful misinterpretation of my little post, essentially asking where the line be drawn between ‘coming on strong’ and forced sex.
Though looking at all the other deliberate caricaturing of all positions going on, it’s not so surprising.
I’ll simply note that, if it’s rape to get sex by repeatedly telling someone they’re only pretending not to want it, or by lowering their resistance with alcohol, or by emotionally blackmailing a partner, then I’ve been raped at least a dozen times.
Comment 202 bears repeating.
Of reported rapes?!?!?
Now that’s scary.
:-D
Well, binge-drinking is a British invention. *sigh*
Other than that, see comments 138 and 141. And of course 149 – you did know that arguments ad populum, from tradition, from authority etc. are logical fallacies, didn’t you?
*snortle*
@julian
Yes, damage is done (I’m not going to comment on if it’s the same amount of damage, I’ll admit to having no clue in that regard and I doubt it’s really quantifiable). All I’m saying is that a better way to phrase it would have been “Nearly 1 in 5 women (18.3%) and 1 in 71 men (1.4%) in the United States have been the victim of rape or attempted rape at some time in their lives”. I don’t think that lessens it in any way, and it’s a more accurate reflection of the statistics.
If you’re trying to convince somebody you already know is actively NOT interested in having sex with you to change their already-given “no” to a “yes” then you’re already participating in rape culture. Simply thinking that this is an okay thing to do increases the chances that you will rape someone or be raped. If you aren’t sure whether they’re interested in you, and are using “coming on strong” techniques in order to reduce the chances that you’ll hear a “no” from this person, then that’s pretty rapey too.
I’m sorry that your sex life has been so completely determined by the rules set down by rape culture. That sucks. Enthusiastic consent makes for much better sex.
Here’s a challenge: pick one post you feel best exemplifies this “deliberate caricaturing.” Quote it, then explain why you think it qualifies as a “deliberate caricature.”
Then perhaps I’ll believe that you’re arguing in good faith.
Happiestsadist 209:
Every so often a comment appears in these threads that is just so eminently quotable that I want to print it out and put it on beer mats the world over. This is one such moment. Absolutely brilliant.
How were you misquoted or misrepresented in this thread? You stated outright that physically intimidating someone into having sex with you was not rape. You said intoxicating someone so that they couldn’t refuse was not rape. Why shouldn’t people be disgusted with that?
Then you have, at the very least, been sexually coerced at least a dozen times. And I’m truly sorry to hear that. Truly. I hope you find either peace outside of a relationship or a relationship that involves only sex with enthusiastic consent.
Freudian typo?
Seconded.
Also seconded.
And? Is that somehow unthinkable?
You have my sympathy. I’m not being sarcastic.
Let me guess: your partner believes men aren’t capable of not wanting sex? You know, “men always want, women always can”, that sort of thing? If so, you’ve experienced firsthand that patriarchy hurts men, too.
SW
Again, the survey measures sexual violence of all types not just rape.
The statistics as to how many people have been subjected to rape includes all rapes both attempted and completed. Only 5% of the 1 in 5 statistic were attempted penetration, but the trauma that they suffer is still due to rape.
Define the terms you are using. Whatever you may have been through, I still strongly suspect you are using iffy definitions and language to create gray where there isn’t. What, just to pick something out, do you mean by emotional blackmail?
Do we know kapitano is a woman in a relationship with a man?
No, but the line you’re quoting actually assumes that kapitano is a man with a partner whose gender is not specified.
I can see this, if only because I’m willing to bet that most women do not want to believe that they had been raped, that it couldn’t happen to them. In my case, I wanted to believe that I had chosen to do what he wanted, if only so that I could get away as soon as he left me alone. Afterwards, I was absolutely determined to forget that it ever happened. It wasn’t until a friend, who knew some of the situation but didn’t understand why I freaked out whenever the phone rang, talked to me about it that I could face the truth of it.
What scares me about my experience is that, compared to others experience, say Illuminatas and Caines, mine was so tame, and yet I am seriously messed up from it. I suffered from severe depression for decades before it happened, but ptsd is a whole ‘nother animal entirely. I can’t deal with ‘authority figures’ or stress of any kind. I can’t even look after my own children because of what happened. It was only one time (albeit the culmination of years of emotionally abusive behaviour) I can’t imagine having to deal with it over and over again. Which brings to mind: this survey cannot tally the numbers of those who killed themselves because of their assaults. I was very nearly one of those and it means those numbers are absolutely worse than they appear.
I’m glad you got out. No one deserves that shit. For others, the biggest help you can give is to be supportive. People who can even manage to get charges laid are not doing it for attention, because who in their right mind would want to go thru the shit all that entails. Rapists however, have every reason to lie about what they did. My rapist certainly did.
Reading apologists comments has brought to light the urge in me to face rape my ex with the butt of a rifle, and I don’t feel bad about that in any way. So much for healthy expression of feelings
note to self: think before typing
@kapitano, you will find that yes, we’re are explicitly saying that those are the deliberate and calculated tactics of rapists.
So long as you don’t call forced sexual intercourse “rape” it’s amazing how many men will self report committing these crimes, and how open they are about their tactics in getting women into the precise situations where they will be doubted and questioned.
We are saying that’s not “getting sex” as you call it, that’s using softer tools of power and coercion to rape.
Great, I was in a horrible, “stab everyone to death” mood this morning. Now I’m back to that state.
You can’t take that kind of incident personally. The ER personnel didn’t know you from Adam.
Oh, I didn’t take it personally!! It was, however, a scary reality check, and I had plenty of time to think about how damn glad I was that there weren’t any other circumstances that made the situation look worse than it already did.
My point in mentioning it was that I think a rational person will recognize that it’s not just innocence but the appearance of innocence that matters. Innocence matters more, but – if you’re worried about getting accused of rape, then don’t even touch someone else who’s drunk. I’m probabably a bit paranoid but if I had a drunken friend to deal with I wouldn’t carry them to my car and drive them to their house, I’d call and pay for a cab. If I’m dealing with people who are messed up, I don’t want to do anything that makes them my responsibility unless I can avoid it.
Just to be clear, since we don’t know @kapitano’s gender or orientation, I was quoting a study that primarily studied typical het-oriented rape, but that doesn’t mean that this the only instance where the tactics matter.
We very much understand that men and women are capable of rape, and that victim doesn’t always mean female.
More from the OP report:
Tethys@251 – seriously? Only one in two? I would have guessed something close to 100%.
damn, messed the blockquote. Last para is mine again.
Alethea, that number seems staggeringly low to me as well, actually. I wonder if people surveyed focused on more of the flashing/masturbation element too much.
I was just thinking about how almost all the women in my life that are comfortable enough to confide in me a little would have one or more incidents under that category. Let alone the number of them that have experienced rape, sexual assault, physical abuse…
By much of this logic, I wasn’t really molested as a child. See, the (female) babysitter had my male friend and I both undress and participate in pretend intercourse. Of course, neither of us knew what this entailed, so it was just him on top and some rubbing around. The babysitter didn’t force us… in fact, it was accomplished through bribery for candy. When the word got around our small community and teenagers were telling people I was ‘pregnant” at 7 years old, none of that harassment REALLY hurt me, because no actual molestation took place.
I feel so much better now knowing I wasn’t violated!
Alethea
I had the exact same thought. I know of only one female who would report that she has never been subjected to any form of sexual violence or misconduct.
Yes. Admittedly, the assumption that kapitano is male relies only on the -o and the arguably circular fact that his comments make a bit more sense that way.
I mean really, what woman hasn’t had the boob or arse grab on public transport, or at a party, or a bar? And I don’t feel comfortable naming it as “sexual assault”, even though it plainly is. That’s another part of how society normalises sexual assault – oh, they’re just flirting, oh, they meant no harm…
ricardodivali, so you “considered” that it might have been sarcasm “Pure White Virgin”, “bestial Negro”, “ruined” clues having gone right over your flat little head. So instead of rubbing your three functional synapses together and maybe asking you assumed I had to be a rape apologist.
Fuck you in the mouth. Porcupine optional.
I think the 1 in 2 statistic is due to the wording of the questions. While attempted rape is included in the rape stats, attempted sexual violence is not included.
The wording is “How many people have ever” rather than “Has this ever happened to you?”.
The groping question is stated as “How many people have ever fondled or grabbed your sexual body parts?”
If the question was changed to “Have you ever been subjected to unwanted touching” rather than just limiting it to sexual body parts I think they would have ended up with a statistic closer to 100%.
It would be close to a 100% for both sexes but that might be because it’s to broad.
Would “Have you ever been touched in such a way that you felt was inappropriately personal?” and another asking the same thing except “made you felt intimidated” be to ambiguous?
This phrasing thing is a pain…
Kapitano… someone drugged and manipulated you for sex… and you don’t consider that rapey? Or am i seriously missing something here?
Anuran, calm down sweety. I simply told you to be clearer in your writings in the future to remove all doubt. Especially when you’re writing about “bestial Negro”s before telling me to get my mouth fucked on a forum about rape.
@ ricardodivali
Everyone got it but you. I don’t think the problem is Anuran’s writing. Would it kill you to just say “whoops, I was wrong”?
sw:
The question in this study did ask whether the respondent could give consent:
“When you were drunk, high, drugged, or passed out and unable to consent, how many people ever…”
Ladyh42: There is always someone whose experience was “worse” (for some values of the term). Doesn’t mean what happened to you wan’t awful and traumatic. You’re not weak for having PTSD, any more than I am. You’re not weak for your depression worsening, anymore than I was.
Rapists have how normalized rape is on their side, knowing that we’ll doubt ourselves, say it wasn’t that bad. Hell with them. I believe you, and as much as an internet stranger can do so, I got your back. And that goes for every other sexual violence survivor here.
@love moderately
I know what it asked, I’m just saying the line is often not clear. There is not a point where after 8 drinks you can give consent, but after 9 you can’t. I can think of a few times when I have had sex, where I am not sure if I was sober enough to really have been able to consent. It’s a tricky question, is all I’m saying.
@sw
the biggest issue I have with your point is that you’re throwing arbitrary numbers out. Number of drinks really isn’t relative. End state is. I know I guy who starts slipping after one beer. Me I’ve downed a bottle of Jack and still been ‘sober’ enough to help my buddy pack up everything into his truck.
You know what intoxicated looks like. So do I. So does every adult on the planet. And honestly, if you aren’t sure, why risk it? If there was a 1 in 10 chance something you did might kill the person you were with would you risk it? Why risk it for rape?
There seems to be a lot of miscommunication here. You’ve had sex with someone while you were drunk. I take this to mean you were with someone and after you’d ordered enough alcohol to take you pass buzzed you decided to sleep with them. Is that what you’re saying happened?
should read
Number of drinks really isn’t relevant.
sorry
No. “It’s tricky” is rape apologism. STOP IT. You are minimizing rape and the importance of consent by doing this.
It really is simple. If you feel the slightest modicum of doubt about whether your prospective partner consents or is capable of consent, then DON’T HAVE SEX.
Easy.
Azkyroth:
Yeah, I noticed that later. The end of your post was past TL;DR on my first skim of the thread. I wasn’t suggesting that cases involving a third party are anything like a majority, by the way, but they do occur and may prevent everything from adding up neatly.
+++++
Gregory:
Seems like a false dichotomy. (I don’t see any evidence that she was left wing, but) reading what Zoe Williams wrote there, I can see how she could have understood her perspective as a liberal feminist one. She makes some obvious errors and non sequiturs, like the “men are indefensible” strawman, but it’s clearly enough coming from a liberal feminist viewpoint.
The thing to keep in mind is that people make stupid mistakes. Williams is a feminist if she believes she is advocating for improvements in women’s quality of life or empowerment. So, at the time she wrote that, I would say she was a liberal feminist making rape apologetics. It happens.
+++++
Giliell:
Christina Hoff Sommers is a libertarian feminist and a terrible person. Her focus in feminism is on securing basic legal rights for women around the world, sufficient for them to enter the workforce on a libertarian definition of “fair footing” — basically, having negative freedoms but not necessarily positive freedoms — so that they can become economic breadwinners.
She is the sort who thinks that asking for protections against sexual harassment will make women appear weak. She’s confused, but her goal is the empowerment of women.
(She’s terribly afraid of backlash, while writing book chapters on how there’s no such thing as backlash. Very confused.)
Oh shit! Wrong quote! Different article, different site entirely. Let me try again.
No. “It’s tricky” is rape apologism. STOP IT. You are minimizing rape and the importance of consent by doing this.
It really is simple. If you feel the slightest modicum of doubt about whether your prospective partner consents or is capable of consent, then DON’T HAVE SEX.
Easy.
sw,
Then your complaint is not relevant to this study, since this study requires the respondent to draw the line wherever the respondent understands it to be.
Ah, but it is TERRIBLY relevant for men trying to figure out if they have raped someone. Which I think accounts for a lot of the rape apologism in these threads–that, and predators like GBD trying to suss out how to be a more efficient predators.
If you’re wondering whether you’ve raped someone then go ahead and talk about it. Maybe you didn’t think of it as rape at the time. You were just following the normal social rules of your culture. It happens–not as often as women get raped (serial rapist predators like the one in the article I linked to before are responsible for the lion’s share of rapes) but it does happen. Take a chance and let it out–you won’t be vilified. Rape apologists, who would help perpetuate the myth that it’s not rape if the perpetrator doesn’t think it is, are scum.
@julian
Yes, that is what I am saying.
And yes, I know what intoxicated looks like, but there are varying degrees of intoxicated. Sometimes it’s clear cut, don’t get me wrong. If a guy gets a girl so drunk she can’t walk of form a coherent sentence, then yes, sex with her would be rape. If a couple both go out, have a couple of drinks, and then go home and have sex then that’s almost certainly not rape.
But then there’s a space in between where exactly *how* impaired your judgement is comes into question, and it’s never going to be an exact science. Which sucks. But we have to do the best we can.
I had one experience where I was drunk, and so was a person I became interested in at a party. They seemed keen, and despite being a bit drunk seemed to know what they were doing. We went to a room and started making out, but their friends came in and said they were too drunk, didn’t know what they were doing, and had a partner. So we stopped. Does this make me an attempted rapist?
This is bad. Like, really BAD.
Wanna know what’s worse?
This is just the REPORTED rapes/assaults. Think about THAT for a minute.
I need a fucking drink, now.
Without more information, it’s hard to tell. This person’s friends seem to think so. It’s certainly possible.
How do you feel about that? Are you going to try to avoid such situations in the future? Really, having sex with a person in a situation like that is basically asking to be accused of rape.
what more information would you need? It was the party of a mutual friend, we were both roughly as drunk as each other as far as I could tell, it’s possible that they were more drunk. We were both well over the limit to drive. If anything they came onto me more than I did to them. They suggested we find somewhere to go, but I asked my friend if I could use their room. The only think I lied about is that I played up an interest in Doctor Who, which they were quite in to. I doubt that either of us would have behaved the way we did if alcohol was not involved.
Am I going to avoid situations like this in the future? Honestly, probably not. I enjoy alcohol, especially with good company. And when enjoying alcohol with good company, things can get sexual. I’d like to think I’m a good enough judge that I can tell when someone is too drunk, but clearly in the case I described different people have different opinions as to where that line is.
WMDKitty, it’s bad, but it’s not quite that bad. It’s reported to anonymous survey, not reported to police.
@ sw
So you disagree with the assessment of this so far genderless person’s friends?
SallyStrange,
Just to add my A$0.02’s worth of anecdata, I jumped to the exact same conclusion as ricardo at first glance – and am now in the process of rebuilding my sarcasm detector, as it failed spectacularly. (Yes, it seems I’m completely thick sometimes :-)
@SallyStrange
Well, yes, I thought the so far genderless person was still in a position to make their own decisions, their friends disagreed. I wasn’t going to argue with the friends, but the so far genderless person did a bit. The information that they had an apparently exclusive partner was enough to stop my advances anyway (and people bursting in and insisting that you are too drunk and don’t know what you’re doing kind of kills the mood regardless).
Dude if they had to stop YOUR advances and it was so one sided, you should thank them for stopping your rape
I’m so glad I never did much drunken hooking up at parties. I far prefer drunken hooking up at outdoor festivals. Nice views, with the stars and all.
Anyway.
No, that doesn’t sound particularly rapey. Since you’re asking people’s opinion about a particular incident, yet being slow with information, I’m going to take the occasion to speculate.
Speculation follows:
She’s female. You’re male. She’s in a relationship. Either she’s happy with the relationship, in which case her motivation for making out with/fucking you is not at all obvious, and a drunken state of mind in which she forgets to mention, or is not given the opportunity to mention, or some combination of the two, is more plausible. However, if she is not happy in the relationship then her motivation for having drunk acquaintance sex with you at a party becomes clearer: to lash out at her boyfriend. She probably doesn’t have very good mechanisms for expressing anger, but she’s finally decided that she wants out of this relationship, and is correctly predicting that sex with you will make her boyfriend angry. In that case her omission of her relationship status seems more calculated, more like a deliberate lie, which requires mental energy, which renders it less plausible that she is too drunk to consent.
The intrusive interruption of the friends lends plausibility to the idea that she is subconsciously using you to express anger. That behavior sounds controlling and policing to me. To be honest, I have a hard time understanding why she went with them, if she was a.) as into it as you make it seem as well as b.) as sober as you seem to think. Perhaps the whole boyfriend thing was made up because they wanted to use something that men will respect. Because they know that “too drunk” always gets met with “nu uh look! She’s giving me a hickey, can’t do that when you’re drunk can you? Right babe?” “mmhm” so instead they go with “OOH, cheating on a boyfriend? TERRIBLE!”
But then maybe she just suddenly felt bad about cheating on her boyfriend…
It’s all speculation of course. I just have a hard time seeing what the attraction is anyway, if you’re not sure.
I think the thing that’s bothering you, sw, is that it all comes down to where she draws the line. You don’t have any control over where she draws the line. And the thing about lines like that is, they’re always shifting. That’s the point of sex, isn’t it–to redraw those lines so that they run right through each other. Which makes us full of joy and also so vulnerable. There is the possibility that the friends were right, she was too drunk, and yet you didn’t think so. You’re not as astute a judge as you thought you were. There was the possibility that if those friends never came in, you might perhaps have done what you thought was consensual sex, but what she experienced as rape. You ended up hurting her, completely by accident. That would be terrible. You would be a terrible person. And yet it almost happened! But you’re a good person! But you almost raped somebody! It must bother you, otherwise you’d never have brought it up.
(Thanks, incidentally, for adding support to my hypothesis that most of the “how drunk is too drunk” conversation on threads about rape is generated by men trying to figure out if they’ve raped somebody or not. )
You haven’t said much about yourself, sw. If you find glazed, rolling eyes, limp limbs, and the inability to speak clear sentences as much of a turnoff as you find intrusions by nosy friends and the existence of exclusive partners, then I reckon you’re straight. Oh yes, and as long as you are sober enough to pay attention to those cues, then you’re pretty sure not to rape anybody. Otherwise, all bets are off. And really, if you’re that fucked up, where’s the fun anyhow? You can barely communicate with this person, and you’re trying to coordinate limbs and movements to the rhythm of sex? One of you is just lying there? There’s no joy in that interaction anyway. But then people like kapitano come in and say it happens to them all the time. So I shouldn’t make assumptions.
Stream of consciousness over now.
Um… to be fair, here, having an exclusive partner didn’t seem to be stopping the so far genderless person. Alcohol or no, if I discovered that a person I was about to get intimate with had withheld that rather relevant piece of information, that alone would stop *me*. At least until the situation could be clarified.
By “straight” I meant “good to go,” i.e., not rapey, which I am just now realizing has homophobic connotations… the way it reads in the paragraph is funny now.
And what SallyStrange said. Whoof, I’m slow.
Thing is, Pteryxx, my “backspace” key is borken.
Also, this. I don’t comment much on the alcohol part because I have almost no experience with it (possibly the one good side effect to being raised by fundies), but I’ve been to a few so-called social gatherings where otherwise intelligent, competent acquaintances turned into swaying, rambling caricatures of themselves after some supposedly celebratory drinking, and I found it terrifying. I’ve seen people with concussions who looked better. Having sex with someone in that state… just, no. Noooooo.
—
SallyStrange @307: no problemo, I wasn’t responding to your correction then, but rather to your whole huge post @303 which crossed paths with mine. Apparently I’ve got a five-minute or so delay in updating comments.
Thanks Happiestsadist. I ‘know’ rationally that I’m not a wuss, but it sure feels that way sometimes. The people here at Pharyngula, despite the apologist trolls and MRA assholes, make me feel safe to talk about it.
And I know why.
Oh yes you do, Josh!
Pteryxx, I meant that now that I can’t backspace, EVERYTHING ends up on the screen instead of, say, 20% of it. Cuz I’m editing less.
I really can’t understand why, 300+ comments in, the whole alcohol and consent thing isn’t crystal clear. I mean, I know it’s crystal clear to some people, what I don’t understand is why it’s not crystal clear to everyone because seriously, it’s not rocket science.
Are they too drunk to be able to clearly REFUSE consent?
Then they’re too drunk to GIVE consent.
There. That was easy.
@Ing
“if they had to stop YOUR advances and it was so one sided, you should thank them for stopping your rape”
Maybe I wasn’t clear. It wasn’t one-sided, I simply mean that the knowledge that they were supposed to be in a monogamous relationship made *me* want to stop. It didn’t seem to make *her* want to stop, as she disagreed with her friends that we should stop.
@SallyStrange
You, my friend, are pretty damn onto it. You are right about the respective genders (but really, that was a pretty easy guess). You’re right that she and her boyfriend were on the rocks (he had apparently cheated on her more than once), and that it was probably either to get back at him, or to put the final nail in the coffin of their relationship. They have split since, by the way.
Yes, she was drunk. She would not have passed a breathalyzer, nor could she have recited the alphabet backwards while standing on one leg. But neither could have I, and we were both far from being unable to speak, walk, or being passed out.
I think you’re right in that a lot of guys worry that they have raped someone, when they think of it as simply playing the game. I think most of us think that we would know, but really, it’s hard to know what someone is going to think the next morning. I certainly don’t like the idea of being someone’s regret.
When you say “I think the thing that’s bothering you, sw, is that it all comes down to where she draws the line. You don’t have any control over where she draws the line. And the thing about lines like that is, they’re always shifting”, I think you’re mostly right.
To answer the point that you have a hard time understanding why she went with her friends, if she was a.) as into it as I make it seem as well as b.) as sober as I seem to think, well, it was a big party, and I think she thought she could slip away from her friends without anyone noticing. She did, for about 5 minutes before they came through the door.
Anyway, the more I think about it now, the more I have to think that if anything, she was using me, which I would like to think means it was pretty definitely not rape.
Not of her, anyway.
It is this idea that sex is a game–with winners and losers–is responsible for a lot of rapes and sexual assaults. Sex is not a game. It is a dance. It is a conversation. A collaboration, not a competition. Yet in this masculinized culture, the competition is built into sex. Competition with the female partner, to make sure he can dominate her the way he’s supposed to, but mostly competition with other men, to be the best at attracting and dominating women. Sex is, essentially, communication (Gunboat Diplomat freaked out when I said that, which is when I concluded that he was, at best, a latent rapist). Our culture teaches that it’s a competitive performance. Only a pussy would be concerned by crossed eyes, labored breathing, lack of moaning, spacing out. Right? You stop to ask if she’s okay, and she might take the pussy away and then you won’t be able to tell your boys that you jizzed on her face! And that would mean you’re a loser. Winners and losers.
Play the game. You get orgasms, but more importantly you get bragging rights. Bro-points. Fraternity approval. A picture of a girl in your bed in the slide show of “fun times” shown to the new recruits.
That’s rape culture. That game you’re talking about it. That’s it.
Holy Fucking Fuck. This is just about the most depressing thing I’ve ever heard of. I figured I’d read the comments first before posting.
HOLY FUCKING FUCK. Rape apologists???? SERIOUSLY???? You’re going to claim that a) It’s OK to have sex with someone if they can’t consent. b)Most women are perfectly willing to lie about being raped c) Coercing someone to have sex is OK.
WHY THE FUCKING FUCK WOULD YOU WANT TO HAVE SEX WITH SOMEONE WHO DOESN’T WANT TO HAVE SEX WITH YOU? /rage
I don’t want to live in a world with such terrible human beings
Sally Strange @315
well said, there ought to be more people like you in the world
Very depressing statistics and thoughts – and all the stories and pain and human misery behind all this is just .. horrendous. Unthinkable and incomprehensible in its overwhelmingness really.
Appallingly figures – let’s all hope and really work to see they improve. What else can we do?
You’re new here.
I’m not even shocked anymore. It’s just a question of when they show up not, if.
Dance is a far better analogy than game. Using that from now on
Then you’ve been raped at least a dozen times.
I’m sorry. But dismissing or trying to define away the suffering of other victims is not an appropriate response.
Bystander training.
This is from another post about the serial rapist Marsalis:
Source
I also recall another comment (saved in my hoard):
By Mambocat, whose full comment is well worth reading: (linky)
We can familiarize ourselves with consent and predators, talk about these things, and be primed and ready to ask questions when something starts to go down.
As a non-rape trauma victim, thank you. :(
I have a question which is kind of along these lines:
Suppose a couple already in a relationship both wish to become intoxicated, and both individuals consent to having sex prior to drinking. Afterwards, they both have a few drinks (enough to qualify as drunk), and have sex. When they wake up, they do not have sufficient memory of the night to know if both were consenting at all times.
Is this rape?
I can see arguments for both sides. For example, if while both were drunk, one of the two changed their mind and denied consent (which is allowed), and the other continued anyways, the other person could be considered as partaking in rape. Or maybe one of the two wanted to stop at some point, but couldn’t verbalize as such due to intoxication.
On the other hand, both did consent at the last moment they were both sober, and if this situation were rape, then a couple in a sexual relationship should avoid alcohol at all times to prevent it.
K I’ve seen several of these now and I’m just going to say this once.
FUCKING STOP WITH THE THOUGHT EXPERIMENTS. Stop with the hairsplitting fictional scenarios. They are doing harm, not just by perpetuating the rape culture (“is it rape NOW? is it rape NOW? where do you draw the line?” as though it’s yours to draw) but by triggering the people who have been actually raped in circumstances others see as questionable. Stop. It.
Why don’t you ask this supposed couple how they feel about it? Or do strawpeople not talk loud enough for you?
For petes sake, making this elaborate stilted scenario just shows you don’t understand consent, or trust for that matter, and you’d rather engage in rules-lawyering. When people in committed, trusting relationships choose to engage in sex games involving consent, they’re taking increased risks, so they need even MORE respect for consent than usual. Safewords, clear scenarios, discussion beforehand, all that. Combined with a high degree of trust in each other.
Simple example: Sleep and Negotiating Consent
(It’s a short article with very few big words.)
QFT
and because I seriously don’t have the nerve to re-argue these depressing, infuriating points, I’ll simply tell y’all to go here if you haven’t read my take on toxic masculinity and sex yet
That might not be what anyone here is saying, but that is what the question asks.
If I was being surveyed, I would have answered “Yes, I’ve had sex when I was drunk”. I gave consent though, and was never so drunk as to pass out.
If I had been surveyed, I’d have given an answer that contributed to incorrect statistics because the question is ambiguous because of both sentence construction and possibly cultural differences in the understanding of the word drunk.
If you define drunk to mean “incapacitated by alcohol” then yes, having sex with a drunk person would be rape. If you define drunk to mean “feeling the effects of alcohol” then it’s not. In my part of the world drunk means the latter.
It’s ridiculous that almost this entire thread has had arguments based on different definitions of drunk, and most people seem to be arguing past each other because of it.
One of the best things you can do at the start of an argument is pin down that you’re all actually speaking the same language.
I got as far as this earlier:
but it was just way too triggering for me to carry on reading.
Last year I watched a programme in which an autistic woman told how she’d been raped as a child because the rules she’d been told included always to do exactly what an adult told her to. Her autism meant she couldn’t deviate from that rule, even when it was someone telling her to take her clothes off and lie still while he raped her.
Only then did I understand what a fucking awful thing autism is, and exactly why I had also done what I was told on that long-ago night. And this is why ‘jokes’ conflating autism and assault make me quite literally want to vomit.
It’s very rare for me to wish that PZ would use the banhammer to crush a poster out of existence, but right now, that’s exactly what I’d like.
julian
I think that those are different things.
I have been touched in ways that I felt inappropriate, and I have been sexually molested.
Touching inappropriately can mean that somebody crossed my personal boundaries and used gestures that they were not entitled to use.
One instance I can think about was when I acompanied my gran to her gyn, because there needed a medical decision to be made and she felt not up to understanding all that stuff.
He shook my hand when we met. That is absolutely OK, requires two to take part and totally fit with the relationship we had, i.e. profesional and “client”.
When I left his office, he placed his hand on my shoulder.
That was not OK. That was an intimate gesture that is appropriate for a relationship between close friends/family members where you can assume to have consent to such an unilateral action.
I also think that all the old ladies who think they can pat my kids on the head touch them inappropriately, but not that they’re sexually molesting them.
+++++++++
I’m wondering why people insist that the question is ambigous and easy to confuse.
Since “unconscious” already implies “unable to give consent”, it is clear that the “unable to give consent applies to all the scenarios.
+++++++++
It’s also annoying how people always try to conflate the issue of drug/alcohol rape which is mostly (not exclusively) an issue of acquaintance rape with long standing intimate partners having drinks first and sex later.
It really isn’t difficult:
When in doubt, do not fuck.
Just like people who think that drunk-driving is bad don’t change their mind after a few drinks, I suppose that people who think that fucking while in a grey area is bad won’t suddenly change after a few drinks.
Getting a fuck is never as important as not raping somebody
@Ing #234
Hmmmm. You’re nuts but if thats what you actually believe I should probably stop posting. No point in me contributing to you becoming even more bat-shit crazy.
You should stop posting because you never have anything interesting to say, you don’t research your arguments well, you aren’t funny, and due to these factors, you waste people’s time.
If I were you, I would go to some other site, change the nym, and try to improve those skills. You’ll probably never be funny, but there is real potential for you to fix the other problems.
I see GD is as pointless and useless as ever. Just can’t grasp he is part of the problem, ergo has nothing cogent to say.
Um, I have probably not much to say here except I recently got intoxicated in a public space and had consensual non-penetrative sex with another person and am thankful for useful information concerning consent, intoxication, implied consent (or lack of) in this discussion, because it allows me to further intoxicate myself and have consensual sex while being careful not to rape, harrass or harm anyone.
I don’t want to be a statistic on either side of a study like this. That is all.
This article interesting and it’s quite depressing that rape happens at all much less in such numbers. However, I’m a bit astounded as to the vitriol of some of the comments, which has caused me to hesitate to even respond.
Concerning this Bev person’s thoughts, for instance, I can see where he’s coming from in terms of the concern about the involvement of alcohol. Before anyone starts accusing me of rape apologetics, however, let me clarify that I would be concerned with it only as a risk factor involved. Being drunk and/or participating in a hook-up culture may increase one’s risk of rape, but it in no way makes rape the victim’s fault, just as it doesn’t make a theft the victim’s fault if they forgot to lock their door. Both the thief and the rapist would still be guilty of a crime. Potential victims, both male and female, would still benefit from knowing those risk factors so they might mitigate them somehow. I would certainly disagree that having sex while drunk is in any way a good idea, though I would also say that there may be a point of fuzziness where both parties involved are drunk. If neither party is capable of making sound judgment, are they both rapists of each other, are neither, is it the man because men are responsible for rape by default, or is the instigator? There’ve been similar fuzzy issues with who’s responsible for statutory rape when both participants are underage.
In any case, being an optimistic sort, I would tend to give Bev the benefit of the doubt that he’s not, as some people have said, a “scumbag” who just wants to excuse rape, or resort to other emotionally charged insults that close down any conversation, and use it as an opportunity to educate or at least try to explore the issue brought up in a civilized manner.
I don’t. Why? He spouts the same nonsense as rape apologists, attempting to disguise it under “rational discussion”. Which, since they have their minds made up, isn’t discussion, but rather preaching and concern trolling. Yawn, been there, done that. We recognize the symptoms.
I think it is noteworthy that Bev’s very first reaction, upon seeing some statistics about rape and sexual assault, is to seek immediately to dismiss and define away the majority of cases as somehow not really rape.
That’s a very strong indication that any “benefit of the doubt” might be misplaced, to say the least.
Yeah, I wonder how often the -a at the end of my nym makes people assume I’m female. Even though -a is not a feminine suffix in that language. I notice I do get ignored plenty by MRA’s, but I get ignored a lot anyway so I don’t know if that has anything to do with it.
*facepalm* Yes, despite everything that’s been said on this thread and others like it, clearly we think men and only men are automatically guilty of rape regardless of circumstance.
You tipped your hand here. Next time, try harder not to be so obviously trolling.
Aren’t you all so glad that Mr. Dude-Who-Likely-Doesn’t-Have-To-Worry-About-Rape is the “optimistic sort”? I mean, isn’t yet another display of dudely privilege exactly what this conversation needs?
I notice that *only* the rape-apologist gets the benefit of the doubt from you, but rape survivors get the same old “shut up, be nice, do my homework for me, stop being so emotional” bullshit. Simply because you couch it in mild language and feigned impartiality doesn’t change the message you’re sending. You might want to consider that, if you’re now going to claim I’m reading you wrong.
sw, Gunboat Diplomat and others:
When you keep writing about fictional or real situations in order to find an alcohol loophole in the whole ‘consent’ thing, it makes you sound like a rapist, or a potential rapist, trying to find an alcohol loophole in the whole ‘consent’ thing.
Too right, Brother Ogvorbis. What is the point of trying to find the loophole if not to exploit it? What is the point of trying to find out where the rape line lies if not because getting enthusiastic consent isn’t your concern, but not being accused of rape is? What is the point of trying to manufacture ways in which situation x, y or z isn’t “really” rape, if not to assuage one’s own guilt?
It’s a gigantic red flag.
They are, as I said, prowling the edges, to try and find out which women are “bad” enough that they can rape them without getting in trouble. No more, no less.
“WAAH! That’s not what I’m doing, you misandrist meanie!” those apologists are whining. Well, then, douchecake, maybe stop engaging in behaviour that looks exactly like predatory boundary-testing, and we’ll stop saying it looks like you’re engaging in predatory boundary-testing.
Also, this whole “hook-up culture” thing? Is fucking nonsense. People have always gotten together to fuck in the absence of a relationship, which most depraved young people actually prefer. So stop with the right-wing red herring.
this reminds me of rebecca watson… just because she has learned her feeble fears of rape from the above american statistics doesn’t mean men in ireland need to mind their p’s and q’s in an elevator on her behalf.
ireland is one of the countries where women are LEAST likely to be raped and if she was as smart as PZ would have us think she was then she would have acted differently.
Basic decency and not being a creep is totally unnecessary on the Emerald Isle. Gotcha.
Go get your porcupine and GTFO. And learn to use your fucking shift key.
Paul, now that you’re done humiliating yourself before the entire internet, its now time to jump off a bridge. Lying bigots are useless to the human race, but some sharks might be hungry. Have a nice jump!
Fucking, lying asshole.
You know what the first thigs was that I was told when I went there to study?
Never go out alone after dark.
Never accept a drink from a stranger.
Always watch your drink because somebody might slip something into it.
Don’t wear headphones while walking because that way you don’t notice somebody sneaking up behind you.
Why did I get told that?
Because it had happened several times on campus during the last year.
Made me feel absolutely safe in Ireland
The study makes it clear just how prevalent rape is, and pauliepoo calls it “feeble” to be concerned about it.
I don’t know why, but the fact that rape-apologists have such a lack of empathy, compassion, and basic common decency still manages to surprise me.
What makes a person like paul hate women so much that he can casually dismiss what’s right in front of his eyes, in order to dredge up a long-dead debate his side lost months ago? What makes defending a man’s patriarchy-appointed privilege to treat women like fuck socks whenever and whereever more important that taking even 5 nanoseconds to listen to what women are saying?
I don’t know why, but it still manages to surprise me there is such hate in the “souls” of these boys.
First you have to explain how she acted inappropriately, and then you have to explain how she should have acted differently. Unless you’re just talking out of your ass, of course.
For all the apologists who keep saying, “Communication is hard, how can you expect the poor menz to know when consent is given and when it’s not?”:
http://yesmeansyesblog.wordpress.com/2011/03/21/mythcommunication-its-not-that-they-dont-understand-they-just-dont-like-the-answer/
Relevant part from a study:
“Drawing on the conversation analytic literature, and on our own data, we claim that both men and women have a sophisticated ability to convey and to comprehend refusals, including refusals which do not include the word ‘no’, and we suggest that male claims not to have ‘understood’ refusals which conform to culturally normative patterns can only be heard as self-interested justifications for coercive behaviour.”
I wish I had posted this earlier, although I doubt it would make a difference, since the rape apologizers never address any counter-arguments, they just tone troll and move goalposts.
“Imma leave. Not because I can’t organize coherent thoughts, or cite facts to support my claims, or because I keep getting eviscerated in the discussions here. Nope. It’s totally because I’m such a nice guy, I don’t want to damage the fragile feefees of the folks on Pharyngula, who are well known for being sensitive and delicate. Really.”
Well then: Do deftly dodge derriere-denting doorknobs during departure, dearie.
Why?
Why is fear of rape feeble? Is it because it has not happened to you? Or do you prefer your potential victims uninformed, ignorant and trusting?
Right. Because we all know that only the United States has any violent crime, only the United States has victims unwilling to report a rape or attempted rape because of fear of what may happen in the legal system or fear of the reaction of family and friends, and only the United States has rude and overbearing men who refuse to recognize a woman’s sovereignty as a human being and refuse to respect boundaries, right?
Citation on that one, please, and, if you could, please include the estimates for the reporting of rape or attempted rape (yes, there are some resonably accurate ways to do this and no, I am not a statistician).
As has been asked before, what did she do that inappropriate that would require she act differently?
Another rape-apologist (slightly different form, this time) who denies that rape could possibly happen in his country. So, pauli, how many times have you had sex with woman who is too drunk to enthusiastically consent to sex? And do you consider that to be rape?
Michael Brew: Thanks for the patronizing mansplanation, you fucking turd gargler.
BTW, totally not surprised to click through to your Assbook profile and find “Philosophical Discussion” there. Not always the sign of a total wanker but a fairly reliable one.
Also, shut the fuck up about “hook-up culture.” As Happiestsadist says, it’s a right-wing scare phrase meant to shame women who dare to do what total strangers have happily been doing since humans began to wander outside their villages: fucking each other.
Finally, fuck you for whining about how “emotionally charged” we are versus how “civilized” you think you are. There’s nothing “civilized” about soft-peddling sexual violence with apologetics. You’re yet another douchewhistle to whom violence against women is an abstract problem. Of course you don’t feel any emotions about it. Try empathy for a change. And take your tone trolling and shove it up your ass, with a porcupine chaser.
The wording in this makes me a little uncomfortable. I understand what was meant: namely that drunken sex when a couple has established some prior consent by planning to go out for drinks and have sex later. But the way it’s phrased does feel a little like the idea that you can’t rape a partner with whom you’ve previously had consensual sex.
If this hypothetical man is drunk enough that he don’t notice she’s not into it (maybe her stomach is upset or she turned her ankle somewhere and/or just doesn’t feel like it), it doesn’t matter that they are a couple or that they may have planned to have sex earlier. Sex has to be enthusiastically consensual from start to end or it isn’t sex, it’s rape. Anything else makes it feel like the rape statute in North Carolina where you can’t revoke consent to sex once it starts; it doesn’t matter if it hurts or you don’t feel like it anymore under that law, there is no legal rape involved.
Does this make sense?
[meta]
Why do some of them insist that being insulted is the same as being “shut down”.
Being called an asshole or worse has never, ever, in meatspace or cyberspace made me shut up and go away.
Rape Apologists:
When you try to come up with examples of situations that are “grey” or where you argue that noticing if you have consent is really quite hard, you sound exactly like a rapist. You give rapists a zone where they can effectively hide from prosecution, because they know that society won’t consider it real rape. When you try to define rapes like mine as grey, or borderline, or tricky, you are the reason I chose to not go to the police. You are the reason my rapist is happily applying to law school instead of choosing a defense attorney and afraid of going to jail for his crime. You are the reason he will be able to easily do it again to other women. You are the rape culture, and I fucking hate you for making my life that much harder.
@michealbrew, you privilege-blind, entitled, arrogant meringue, I just want to tell you to fuck right off now. There is a reason we’re furious with you, and it’s precisely that you’re engaging rape apologism while claiming you’re not as if we would overlook it if it had a disclaimer.
Did you even fucking read the statistics in the post? Do you see that being a good sexually shamed woman doesn’t fucking save you from rape?
Women, despite being warned about strangers with useless “rape prevention” tips (like yours, thanks for that sweetie), and random hookups, are in greatest danger of being raped by those we trust and know.
So no, we’re not going to start constraining what we do and think and wear and say just because people like you claim it makes us safer. You don’t get to restrict our freedoms on some imaginary idea that it will keep us safe. It doesn’t.
Personally, if I could beat you over the head with @Happiestsadist’s words long enough that you’d understand, I would do it.
Sadly, I think it’s futile. So fuck off.
carlie, I’m very sorry, I didn’t see that you had already posted the same link I did – and with the same quote!
You are assuming that when person A and person B have sex the only motivation is between those people. For too many Bs, it’s persons C,D,E, and so on who matter, while person A is largely replaceable based on some shallow set of criteria. The sharing is with perceived equals and the extra person is seen largely as a set of attributes, not an equal. Sex for reputation, sex for an audience, sex for bragging rights, these things create rape.
The really sad thing about rape culture is that it is not essential to condone rape to fall victim to it. When humans see others suffering misfortune, they tend to try to attribute it to something the victim did. Blaming the victim gives people the illusion that if they avoid the mistakes of others, they will not suffer misfortune.
In reality the only common denominator that rapes have is that they involve rapists. Rapists are predators. Predators strike at random on any potential victim they find vulnerable. It could be an infant or an 80 year old great grandmother, a prostitute or a nun.
Look, if we call you out as an apologist for rape culture, it is not necessarily so that we are saying you are a bad person. Rather we are pointing out that you need to wake up and see rape for what it is–before you or someone you care about falls victim to it.
{Reads Thread}
{Sees Rape Apologists}
{Weeps}
Louis
I can’t co-sign this. When I call someone out as a rape-apologist I’m saying that person is presenting themselves as someone I would not want to be alone with. While not necessarily calling them a “bad person”, I am saying that they are presenting themselves as a person to be avoided and now’s their chance to step back, think and correct course, if they AREN’T that sort of person.
This is the reason I’m not nice about it. The only information I have about this person is that they make excuses for rapists and defend them. That all they ever seem to do is disappear or tone troll tells me that they don’t care at all about the damage they’re doing.
And, has one ever actually shut the fuck up long enough to digest what people say in response? Whether or not they’re “nice” about it?
They may not be bad people, otherwise, just like a KKK member might not be a bad guy, apart from derranged racism. I still wouldn’t want to be alone with any of them. I already know they’re prepared to blame me for what they do.
More on rape and blaming from feministe.
Specifically, it’s about what the whole “rape prevention tips” meme does with regard to blame and responsibility, and talks about drunk rapes.
Here’s the direct link to Ottawa’s “don’t be an asshole who rapes drunk women” campaign here.
We need more of these.
I’m glad someone finally Got It. I wish there were more campaigns like this, and precisely zero others telling women not to drink or dress like sluts.
@Brother Ogvorbis
“When you keep writing about fictional or real situations in order to find an alcohol loophole in the whole ‘consent’ thing, it makes you sound like a rapist, or a potential rapist, trying to find an alcohol loophole in the whole ‘consent’ thing.”
First of all, someone earlier called upon people to post situations they have encountered if they were wondering whether or not they were rape.
Second of all, can we avoid these “talking like this make you sound like a rapist” style arguments. People discuss all sorts of things, and it doesn’t necessarily imply anything about them.
I am not looking for a loophole. What I am looking for are some clear-cut rules. In ING’s eyes, apparently, I have attempted rape. Before this thread I hadn’t even really considered that someone could accidentally rape someone. You want to know the main reason I’m asking questions about this here? Because I like my world view to be as consistent as possible, and this seems to be an area where I’m not so sure about some things.
In college, I met a guy who liked to talk about getting women drunk, tying them up, and raping them for a weekend (of course, he didn’t use the word rape). I have no idea if he actually did this or not. I reported him to his RA and to the campus police department. In high school, I new farmers who talked about using a veterinary sedative to make ‘the uptight girls relax.’ I have no idea if they did that or not, but, at the time it made me uncomfortable and almost thirty years later is scares the shit out of me. Yes, people discuss all sorts of things. When one’s only contact with someone is a blog’s comment thread, and that person seems to be trying to determine how drunk is too drunk, and how do I know, and what if this, and what if that, it sets off alarm bells for me, and for others (and others have called you out for this behaviour — why did you only respond to me? Is it because I have a male pseudonym and thus will ‘understand’?)
Clear cut rules? How about, ‘if there is not enthusiastic consent, it may be rape, therefore don’t do it?’ Or is that too simple? There is no hard and fast, clear cut rule about how many drinks, or what blood alcohol level, means that a partner cannot enthisiastically consent. It is different for every person. These fictional secenarios really do make it sound as if you are looking for a loophole. If that is not your intent, you may want to examine your language, tactics, and purpose.
Reading your comments, and bev’s, and Gunboat Diplomat’s, scare the shit out of me. And no, I am not going to, once again, go into why alcohol and rape and consent are rather triggering for me.
If you are serious about this, then I suggest taking ‘if there is not enthusiastic consent, it may be rape, therefore don’t do it’ to heart. If you are looking for loopholes which will allow you to get away with rape while lying to yourself that it is not rape, get lost.
That was me. My opinions are not everyone else’s. Also, I was only saying that talking about an actual incident would be preferable to these endless hypothetical what-if thought experiments. I said that there were some people who may be wondering if they may have accidentally raped someone, AND there were also some people who are investigating exactly where the line is drawn so they can get better at raping. Both things are happening. If you don’t fall into the latter category, then Og’s post was not aimed at you. So don’t make the mistake of taking it personally.
No, I’m sorry, I disagree. There are posters who really do sound a lot like rapists. You didn’t, particularly, but you were the ONLY person to present an actual incident rather than some bizarre, and somewhat disturbing, thought experiment. Again, if you’re not the target then don’t take it personally.
That’s Ing’s opinion. My opinion is that that girl attempted to sexually manipulate you. She, not you, was on the verge of committing rape.
Again, you’re not what Ogvorbis is talking about here. Getting defensive is an understandable reaction, but don’t fall into that trap. There are predators out there. Some of them may be reading this thread. Posters whose communication conveys that they seem like predators need to know that that’s how they are coming across. Informing them of this is always informative. Reasonable men react with dismay and immediately attempt to modify their communication style. Creepy predator types deny even the possibility that they could possibly give that impression, and insist that if anyone is getting that impression it’s because they are are irrational, angry, prejudiced, or something like that. Again, to my mind, you haven’t given that impression. So a.) don’t sweat it and b.) please don’t try to shut down our identifying and calling out misogynists and rape apologists.
Ignorant question: why not simply wait till the next morning? If you still want each other after you’ve sobered up, all these worries have evaporated.
Link, please!!! :-)
Seconded.
I’ll steal that. :-)
Here’s a nice, clear-cut rule: If you’re not absolutely certain if you have consent, then YOU DON’T HAVE CONSENT.
Are you in doubt about whether a person is consenting? Then you should go ahead and assume that you might well be raping them and you should stop and make it CLEAR before you continue. The very presence of doubt in the situation should be enough to kill your boner. If it doesn’t, then it’s time for some serious self-examination.
No. If you’re exhibiting behavior typical of a predator, that means either you are a predator, or you’re making it harder to pick them out from the crowd. Both ought to be stopped in their tracks, and merely calling them out in discussion for what they are is a step toward doing that.
Congratulations on the vaguest sentence ever written. Say what you mean.
Maybe not. Other people are. Stop being so defensive of yourself that you defend them.
In the situation I explained above, I thought I had enthusiastic consent. She was hitting on me, she suggested we move somewhere more private, and she seemed sober enough that she was capable of knowing what she was doing. That last bit seems to be the only bone of contention.
@Brother
No, you were the first person I saw asking the question. I didn’t even notice the pseudonym.
I am not going to ask you to. I have friends who have been raped, and are understandably upset by that sort of discussion. So have I actually, but that’s a different story altogether, and like you I’d rather not go into it too.
I have not put forward any fictional scenarios to the best of my memory.
@Sally
Thankyou for continuing to be awesome. If I seem to be shutting down your identifying and calling out misogynists and rape apologists, I apologize.
Yeah – what people are saying about the clear-cut rule? I already second it, and I want to emphasize it again: if you’re not 100% certain that your prospective partner is ENTHUSIASTICALLY consenting–if you’re only 99% sure, and 1% in doubt–then STOP. Don’t take the risk of raping someone.
I must say, I was rather disappointed that you said you would continue to pursue drunken party hook-ups. Not only are you risking accidentally causing someone terrible mental and emotional pain, you’re also risking being used and manipulated, like that girl did with you. The ostensible reward–a drunken orgasm–really doesn’t seem like it’s worth the risk to me.
If you want people to stop viewing you with suspicion, I would urge you to stop defending rape apologists. You didn’t do most of the things people are objecting to, so why get involved?
Errr… “I already SAID it”
not “I already second it”
I believe it was in the same thread that someone already linked to above. Sorry, I don’t keep bookmarks of threads and whatnot, and I just got a root canal so my wits are dulled by vicodin. It was the MRAs are hilarious thread. I think.
Ok: If you’re at all unsure, the answer’s no.
That’s a very clear-cut rule.
If you find yourself wondering “Would this person be interested in me stone cold sober?” then you’ve got your answer: No.
sw:
Having reread your post, I retract. Apparently I am incapable of reading. Soryr.
@Anri
But doing things you wouldn’t do sober is the main reason most people drink in the first place, at least where I come from. And if sleeping with people who might not do it if they were sober is rape, then rape is far more prevalent than even this study suggests.
And as far as “If you’re at all unsure, the answer’s no”, for someone who has as horrifically low self esteem as me when it comes to the opposite sex, then the answer has always been no. There has always been doubt in my mind that *any* girl actually wants to sleep with me (yes, go ahead, make jokes with that).
@Brother Ogvorbis
No worries, I do that all the time.
This is a travesty. Making a decision sober then getting liquored up to blame it on the booze is wretched and should stop. Get drunk, revel in it, but don’t blame your actions on it. Can you not see the cover that provides?
BINGO!
That does not mean that they are all rapes, but many, far more than the victims realize, are.
I forget who mentioned it but this really is a functioning version of Pascal’s Wager. The only difference is instead of gaining something you stand to seriously hurt someone. There really is no reason to hang out in gray areas where you aren’t sure of consent or if the person is going to be hurt by this. Sex is not that important.
That said, this all still strikes me as entirely besides the point. I do not genuinely believe there are people out there who might find themselves in a situation where they can reasonably claim to not have understood there was no consent. More likely consent was assumed and they didn’t care to check on their partner.
Side note: People who (like GBD) make these arguments from a liberal perspective seem to earnestly believe everyone should want sex. Those that don’t are either being uptight or trying to uphold some puritanical standard. (And secretly they want it too.) It’s essentially a failing if you don’t want to engage in random hook ups or if your conservative in your partner selection.
I think that’s a problematic attitude because it’s already propping up a mindset where consent is simply assumed as opposed to confirmed. Which is going to lead to rape. Especially if you’re with strangers who you know next to nothing about.
There’s any number of things you could do depending on what you’re looking for. If it’s sex, there are a number of sex workers out there who are explicit in what they want and will not do. Dating sites (I’m told) provide a pretty decent atmosphere to put yourself out in.
It’s actually really refreshing to see a comment thread on the internet about rape statistics where reasonable people outnumber rape apologists!
That said – and this is in reply to the comments, rather than the statistics – it’s simplistic to claim that a drunk person can never consent to sex. Drunk people still have to deal with the consequences of their actions, whether it is murdering someone or setting something on fire or sleeping with someone you would not sleep with if you were not drunk. Some people have such hang-ups about their sexuality or body image that they don’t feel comfortable soliciting or having sex sober.
I guess the big difference is that drunk people sometimes can’t express their objections as clearly as when they are sober – so sometimes one party will feel they were raped when the other party feels they would have stopped if they had been given a clear sign to stop. Does the victim have the right to feel hurt and seek support? Of course! Is the perpetrator criminally liable, and are they guilty of *being a rapist*? That’s more complex.
That said, I doubt these cases skew the figures at all, and they are awful figures.
I don’t see why it would be. The question isn’t (or at least to me isn’t) did they say no. It’s ‘did they say yes.’
If you do not have a clear indication the person you are with wants to have sex but do have reason to suspect they may not then I don’t see it as anyway defensible.
Also I think for the purpose of this discussion (if you all insist it happen) we should stop assuming the level of drunkenness remains constant throughout the encounter. It’s perfectly possible the pair began in what was entirely mutual sexual play but one partner just wasn’t feeling the full effects of the alcohol. And then it hits them. And then they no longer know what’s going on. And then they’re no longer into it because all they can think about is puking and how they wish everything would be normal again.
It’s annoying to see people constantly argue about giving consent while intoxicated while assuming the levels of drunkenness don’t change and that the consent remains in place throughout the night regardless of the person’s condition.
Indeed it is, which is why, if you happen actually READ what people have written, I believe you will see that precisely no one was claiming otherwise.
arrgh…
Actually, that’s not my opinion either. I pointed out that despite the claim being her being an instigator he phrased the situation as the friends having to stop HIS advances, not hers but his. I was pointing out that that doesn’t match the rest of the narrative and does sound like rape.
Smallest violin. If you’d rather risk raping someone than being a decent person because of personal issues that’s not a good endorsement of your character.
*hangs “Mission Accomplished” banner*
It’s an awfully odd strategy to try to insult me by giving in to exactly what I want. Hey you know what would really hurt my feelings? Nice bowel of icecream! You can even spell out “You suck” in the sprinkles!
Side note: that you go to “well you’re crazy and unappreciated” instead of “Oh wow, what have I done to potentially trigger and offend people so much that you would say that” sort of backs up my hypothesis.
The impression that I got from the usage of ‘advances’ in the sentence in question was that he meant ‘interest’ instead of ‘continued attempts to have sex with her after her friends had busted in’. Or at least, that would fit rest of the narrative better.
I could easily be wrong.
Finally, that thing gets used appropriately! I was starting to feel sorry for it.
Can’t really disagree with you there. Sw sort of teeters on the border between dangerously myopic and merely self-centered. He means well, but I think he’s still having trouble conceptualizing women as autonomous agents.
If that’s the line, then I am very glad to hear I have never raped anyone, or come anywhere near it. Nor, to the best of my knowledge, have any of my friends.
You just had to add that line.
When in doubt, do not fuck.
Educate yourself before on possible risks and add them to your analysis.
slignot
I’m rather concerned about this hypothetical man who comes up time after time again who’s totes able to fuck but obviously too drunk to notice that his partner has died in the meantime.
This doesn’t negate the points you brought up:
It’s absolutely possible to rape somebody with whom you had consensual sex before, it’s absolutely possible that something that started as consensual sex turns into rape.
I like sex, I like having a drink. If we had to choose to either have one or the other, our lives would be worse than they are now.
But I also have a partner who actually cares a lot about:
-me having pleasure
-me not being uncomfortable
This means that he’ll stop the moment I say “outch”. He’ll stop, ask what’s happened, and if he hurt me so I don’t want to go on, that’s it. I’ve never seen this behaviour change due to alcohol and I can tell you we have been so drunk that after 5 minutes we gave up and decided to go to sleep instead.
I made this comparisson before: People who think that drunk-driving is bad don’t suddenly do it because they’re drunk. The only people I know who’ve been caught either had a serious problem with alcohol or thought that “oh, it’s OK”.
I see no reason why this should be any different when it comes to sex.
@Classical Cipher
What was wrong with that line?
All right. I call bullshit.
NO ONE is REALLY this stupid.
The ONLY REASONABLE WAY TO PARSE THIS STATEMENT is:
“When you were any of the following: drunk, high, drugged, or passed out; and thus, unable to consent.”
NO ONE is REALLY that stupid.
Give us the benefit of the doubt that maybe we have more experience with rape apologists than you, and thus recognize their tactics more readily and notice as smoking guns signs that you might overlook, and that maybe we have more experience with both trolls and the sincerely incurably vile and thus know better than you whether a “civilized manner” even works with them, and we’ll consider it.
Then talk more and drink less. I don’t know, perhaps start talking about what you find so desirable about the other person and wait for the compliment to be returned?
If necessary, get therapy.
Seconded and thirded!
Also seconded and thirded.
After the events of the last year, just on this (these?) blog, you can ask that?
I have no intentions to make jokes about this, but quite frankly, your self esteem is not the biggest problem in the room here.
Given that we’re talking about, you know, rape and all.
Other people weren’t put on the planet for you to have sex with. If you care to pursue sex, wonderful. If you find yourself incapable of safely and reasonably pursuing a sexual relationship, however casual, I feel sorry for you, but that’s honestly not my problem.
As suggested, get counseling.
Besides, understanding consent SOLVES BOTH PROBLEMS. If you feel that “yes” couldn’t possibly mean yes, ASK AGAIN. And again. Someone who really wants sex with you will be motivated to keep going as long as YOU are okay; and if they don’t want sex, then shouldn’t you be asking if you don’t want to rape them? “Are you really sure about this? Because I don’t want to make you do anything you’re not happy to do…” is one of the sexiest things you could ever say.
And you don’t just ask for consent, you also give it. SAY you’re happy with how things are going. ASK your partner to touch you. ASK if you can touch them. Heck, if you’re too shy to talk during sex, then before you get started, say “I’m shy, would you do the talking?” This is what my current partner and I do; xe’s the shy one, therefore every so often *I* ask “Is this okay?” and look for the nod. (Two shy people need to work this out beforehand: use safewords, hand squeezes, whatever you can manage.)
And if you’re really so shy that you can’t even say “yes”, honestly, you need to at least learn how to do that, so your partner doesn’t run the risk of raping YOU.
No one is honestly confused as to the reasonable interpretation of that statement. They simply pretend it’s open to interpretation so they can ascribe the unreasonable interpretations to it and thus dismiss it and the implicit censure of what they’ve done or would do given the opportunity, or what their friends have done or think would be awesome given the opportunity.
Having sex while intoxicated, not indicating reluctance to doing so (perhaps, at the time), then regretting it afterwards is not “rape”, per se, or a condition of having been raped; it is an evidence of unfortunate stupidity. Unless the victim was unconscious or so far impaired there was no awareness of what was going on around them, that person remains culpable for their own willful (,if uncomfortable) activities.
As a general rule for the ‘perpetrator’, if ones’ intended love interest is or seems to be intoxicated, no attempt should be made to have sex with that person both on the grounds of basic decency but also, as that person’s judgment is impaired, consent to engage in sexual activity would then be suspect and unreliable.
Having said that much, however, simple ‘morning after’ regret for prior sexual activity one may have engaged in while inebriated, if not clearly or explicitly refused beforehand, does not rise to any definition of “rape” thus far rendered.
Wishing to wreak legal or criminal vengeance upon the lowlife who took advantage of you while you were intoxicated is not equivalent to being taken sexually against your (express) will.
‘Crying rape’ in that case only cheapens the definition of rape.
“Alcohol/drug facilitated complete penetration”, as used by the author, is in my opinion incomplete and unfortunate in it’s usage as a category of rape, without the proper distinction being made.
alexmartin,
If you had read either the thread or the study itself, you would know that these were the questions:
“When you were drunk, high, drugged, or passed out and unable to consent, how many people ever…
• had vaginal sex with you? By vaginal sex, we mean that {if female: a man or boy put his penis in your vagina} {if male: a woman or girl made you put your penis in her vagina}?
• {if male} made you perform anal sex, meaning that they made you put your penis into their anus?
• made you receive anal sex, meaning they put their penis into your anus?
• made you perform oral sex, meaning that they put their penis in your mouth or made you penetrate their vagina or anus with your mouth?
• made you receive oral sex, meaning that they put their mouth on your {if male: penis} {if female: vagina} or anus?”
My comment above no more makes me a “rape apologist” than it makes me the president of the United States of America and, I can assure you, I am not the president. What I like about the immediate ad hominems is that, á la Hitchens, the accusers have nothing of substance to contribute and in being thus argumentative merely compliment me.
If RKW was truly concerned about the threat of rape in that Dublin elevator then, judging by the above statistics (and the statistics of rape in the Republic of Ireland), she was severely misguided and feeble minded to think there was even the remotest chance of being assaulted on that glorious occasion. She had more chance of being run over by a car crossing the streets of Dublin or choking to death on pint of Guinness. That was my point.
The other possibility, that she was merely being petulant all over the intertubes about some creepy and inept elevator dude, has earned her all the derision she has received – and then some. Her freedom to whine will never supersede his freedom to be a dork or our freedom to mock her.
What really made cry tears of stupendous exhilaration was the declaration that my “side lost [that debate] months ago.” Well I’m sure that Kepler, Copernicus and Galileo lost a few debates to the Simplicici of their times too… The fact that PZ seems to support her doesn’t make her argument (or yours) any more valid. And it doesn’t make PZ anything less than a poopyhead. And everybody knows that PZ is a poopyhead.
The idea I find sadly amusing in this thread – and so many of its ilk – is how fast the accusations of rape apologia begin (just 34 comments here!) and the continuing sneering ineptness of the accusers does as much to contribute to the validity of their argument as dried banana peels do to keep your ears warm in winter.
Therefore, and in the everlasting honour of Rebecca, I am declaring a new internet principle called “Watson’s Law” as follows:
In any internet discussion about sexual assault or sexual harassment, all comments not expressly supporting the victims (or “survivors”) will be construed as coming from a “rape apologist.”
Thank you.
Oh for crying out… The problem was NOT primarily with what EG did. Yes, it was stupid and creepy and all that, but it was not claimed to be even close to rape. The problem is with all the privileged people afterwards whining about being told that this was an extremely inappropriate and stupid thing to do.
And that wasn’t even in that strong terms, ‘Guys don’t do that’ as I remember.
So I for one get a little annoyed when people get similarly offended by suggestions that sex should only be engaged in when both parties are consenting enthusiastically. And that drunk is not the same as consenting.