November 21, 2005

• Shocking? In a world where one tribe sees nothing wrong with wiping out another? I think what is shocking is that 64% DON'T believe a woman is responsible. "She asked for it" is the weakest dodge in the male world. If she's asking for "it" let her tell you "yes i said yes"
• And 34% of respondents say invading Iraq was the right thing to do. Coincidence?
• My mind cannot possibly imagine rape as an appropriate punishment for behaving in a flirtatious manner. Forcing the woman to sit through one of my long, boring personal anecdotes is punishment enough. (refer to pictures of last meetup)
• nice to hear the menfolk lambasting the utter horrificness of this position. other than that, I don't know what to say...
• Yes, petebest, Saddam Hussein was dressing like a whore. Sorry, this subject deserves better, but still, that IS my favorite mentasl image of the week so far.
• Having worked with rape victims and seeing up close the damage it can do, I can guarantee you that they NEVER "ask for it." It is my firm opinion that, in this day of DNA testing, that rape should be a death penalty crime.
• so fes, prior to dna testing, how would you have punished rape?
• It is not my intention to make this a debate on capital punishment. But I mention DNA specifically because it makes things sure, and I think that rape (obviously, according to the Amnesty study) is a crime that people (men) seem to not take very seriously in light of its hellish and far-reaching consequences for the victim. But, to answer your question, if I was king, I imagine I would have punished rape similarly before DNA testing as I would after. If one wants people to take crimes seriously, one should levy appropriate punishments. Perhaps this is a good reason against making me king, but it would likely be one good reason amongst many.
• DNA testing doesn't prove lack of consent.
• No, but that's what court testimony and other evidence gathering is for.
• I'd be more likely to support Horse Bukkake than Death Penalty. Horse Bukkake, and of course, a very long sentance in a federal pound-you-in-the-ass prison.
• > I imagine I would have punished rape similarly before DNA testing as I would after. okay, fair enough. i didn't understand why there'd be a difference. i don't want to get into the capital punishment debate either, but i'd note that dna testing makes things (very) considerably more likely. i think one major problem with our perception of rape is that it continues to be treated as concerning sex rather than concerning violence. this is how ideas of "leading him on" or "dressing provocatively" get into the picture. i've yet to see a gbh case where the victim's clothing was seen as a mitigating factor.
• It is my firm opinion that, in this day of DNA testing, that rape should be a death penalty crime Women should have the right to dress and act however they want. This is not Saudi Arabia. There should not be absurdly draconian punishments for any crimes, horrible as they may be. Again, this is not Saudi Arabia.
• Interestingly enough, 22 percent of men felt that revealing clothing makes a woman partially repsonsible for being raped, while only 17 percent of women think that. All of the other factors that the poll had people to consider had no significant gender distinction. The biggest difference was among people older than 65. They are most likely to think that a woman's behaviour, apprearance, or past make a woman more repsonsible. If I were a criminal defense attorney and I was picking a jury in a rape case, you can bet that I would try to stack it with old people. Lastly, it should be pointed out that the figures cited in the article are percentages of people who think that the various factors make a woman "partially" at fault. That is rather non-specific, and could mean that the fault most people would find the women to have would be negligible.
• Same old, same old. 34% of the population is butt-stupid and incapable of the imagination needed to think about any situation or perception of reality outside of their own, and, best of all, doesn't really give a shit, as long as whatever it is doesn't happen to them. Sadly, this stat doesn't surprise me at all. Personally, I don't support the death penalty for rape; if the punishment is put in a separate category from other punishments for violent crimes like aggravated assault, I think it reinforces the idea of a woman being damaged goods after a rape. It's a violent crime. It happened to a woman. Mandatory minimum sentencing for both. There is a crucial psychological difference between 'victim' and 'crime victim'. A crime should not inflict further damage by being made what a person is rather than seen as an nasty event that happened but can and will be dealt with and left behind, as are other awful things in life.
• I agree with moneyjane. I've got close friends who've been raped, both sexes. One of my girlfriends got it about as bad as it can get. Rape is fucked up, and it can hurt people physically and mentally for a while after the crime. But human beings are remarkably resilient, and can get over it. I am not at all kidding when I suggest horse bukkake as a (one of many) punishment for rape. Rape is disgusting and demeaning, and I'm all for letting a rapist experience the flip side of that coin. Other rape punishments I support are anything involving human poo. I don't ever support the death penalty for anything. I do support the sterilization of 34% of society.
• But I mention DNA specifically because it makes things sure... You watch/read way too much crime drama. DNA testing has a lot of room for error: it's done by statistics. Not only that, but there is a tendency to "justify one's operating budget" in the technical side of forensics by publishing results that are certain rather than inconclusive. As well, inconclusive evidence may be manipulated in courtrooms by clever lawyers for the benefit of an uninitiated jury. This is not speculation, this kind of stuff happens. DNA is just evidence, like toolmarks of fingerprints. Yes it may help sometimes, but it definitely isn't certain. O.J. walks free because of a botched label job in the lab that matched his DNA with the scene of the crime. Imagine, now that there was another suspect with more evidence placing him at the scene of the crime. And what moneyjane said, plus.
• bernockle - I'a sweet (?) little old lady of 67, but if you picked me for a jury I think I could do a hell of a job persuading others that enjoying one's body and flirtation are not a recipe making rape being ok. The former has to do with self confidence, and the latter with having fun. Flirtation is fun while testing out whether that guy is a potential friend. And whether friendship might lead to a relationship, or at least consensual sex. It's also fun when you engagte in it with your SO when you're in a good relationship You gotta remember that there are a lot of us geezers who are shameless beatniks/hippies, and we have the chops to be very persuasive. Don't know whether you'd have better luck with male geezers than with female, but I suspect it depends on the fundamentalismitood of your bailiwik..
• Oh, and, I'd like to see the data from that survey plotted. My guess is that it would approximate a bell curve.
• From the article: Changes in the law relating to consent mean that an alleged rapist must show that they had taken reasonable steps to ensure that the other person had consented to sex. This sounds like a controversial issue, and one that many people (men and women) would have some problem with...essentially demanding that men get a signed and notarized consent form before they're allowed to proceed. Most of us would agree that there's not always a lot of 'asking for permission' going on in the heat of the moment, and that consent is more often implied than explicitly granted verbally. I would hazard to guess that the new laws, and the surrounding controversy, were in mind when many answered the poll question. I seriously doubt if any would give the same answer if the question were specifically about violent rape, which the vast majority would consider abhorrent, and to no degree the fault of the victim. This is not to excuse date rape. I'm just saying you can't group the two together and expect the poll results to apply to both.
• Please, please pick your GramMa for the jury. And not only will I find the bastard guilty even if the victim was stark nekked in the streets on a Sunday morning, but I will personally use a knife to cut the bastard's balls off. Oh, and if the bastard has caused grievous bodily harm committing this rape, I'll cut his balls of in strips with a dull knife, and then cheer when someone else does the lobotomy. Lobotomy as capitol punishment--now that's an idea who's time has come. They'd be functional, be able to do a job and not be a burden on society by our having to support them in prisons, and it wouldn't hurt. Good solution.
• *♥ path and BlueHorse*
• Whoa, BlueHorse, that was pretty extreme. I can only think that you have some history that gets you to that point. I do have some history - not myself, but someone I'm close to - and while we would have loved some way to get even, even she would never have gone that far.
• rape is a really fucking bad thing. no matter who, what, where or how. however, i am dismayed at the normally rational monkeys here gleefully advocating the torture and murder of alleged/accused/convicted rapists. Are these the same monkeys that decry war and death and horror elsewhere here? The same monkeys who deplored the obscenity at Abu Ghraib? I hope they're not. I hope that they are sockpuppets, baggy-pantsed or just plain liars. Rape is a terrible thing, but so is torture and murder and anything inbetween. And when perpetrated by the state, those violations of anyone's human rights are the worst kind of abuse.
• I would hazard to guess that the new laws, and the surrounding controversy, were in mind when many answered the poll question. I'm not convinced this is the case. Very few of the questions strike me as interpretive. Rather, most seem to be deliberately aimed at avoiding relative interpretations of exactly what would legally constitute rape. essentially demanding that men get a signed and notarized consent form before they're allowed to proceed Historically (and not all that historically, at that), a rape victim's conduct was routinely put on trial by defence lawyers as a means of implying that consent was arbitrarily, perhaps even vindictively, recanted after an otherwise consensual sexual encounter. You wouldn't have to go looking too hard to find court transcripts in which women have been forced to describe intimate details about past sexual experiences in an attempt to portray them as being incapable of credibly pressing a charge of rape, no matter what the circumstances. And yes, it may seem that men in the UK will have to go to extraordinary lengths to justify that any act of sex was consensual, but the reality will be that the law will be interpreted and administered by a judiciary who, for the most part, usually don't distinguish themselves as being lunatics looking to put away half the population of a country just because they have dangly bits hanging between their legs. As far as I can tell, and with all that IANAL goodness thrown in, the changes introduce (or perhaps consolidate) an understanding that consent can't be implied. If you're in any doubt, then it's almost certainly time for, "Hey, thanks for a nice evening, I'm off home to have a cold shower and to spend three-and-a-half minutes with my favorite issue of Penthouse."
• Creeped out by BlueHorse over here.
• Firstly: rape is bad. No means no. But.. something curious that happened to me a few years ago makes me want to say -- you ladies need to be careful what signals you're sending out. To elaborate: A few years ago, I was sent to the US for some training. Spent a few days in San Jose, and was taken out on the town by the daughter of the dude who was training me. One thing led to another on the dancefloor, she ended up taking me home to my hotel but, before coming in, stated "no funny business". Being the nice young lad that I was, funny business failed to ensue. At all. Of course, what she actually meant was: "Take me, big boy". As I discovered later. When I was several hundred miles away. I guess my point here is that it's easy for wires to get crossed. Whilst not something I could consider doing myself, I can see how, in the same situation, a different drunk young gent might take a flirtatious "no funny business" as simply playing hard-to-get, press his suit, and end up forcing a girl to have sex she actually _didn't_ want. /rambling anecdote
• I can see how, in the same situation, a different drunk young gent might take a flirtatious "no funny business" as simply playing hard-to-get, press his suit, and end up forcing a girl to have sex she actually _didn't_ want And, cough, not to point out the blindingly obvious, but wouldn't that be rape? "Playing hard-to-get" in your hypothetical scenario sounds like a fairly transparent euphemism for "She was asking for it". Maybe I'm just not much of an alpha male, but I've never understood the "damn, she told me no but apparently meant yes" lament. She told you no, so walk on by (which sounds exactly like what you did). It shouldn't be that big a deal, and any time it is a big enough deal that someone is willing to play 2nd-guessing games over whether or not "no really means no", then that someone is in real danger of doing something both criminal and appalling.
• I wonder what the results would be if the question were about male rape. "But officer, he was wearing Abercrombie & Fitch!" I think the 34% figure is surprisingly high, considering that it's for the general population and not just for men. (Note: I didn't download nor read the full report) If it were 34% over the male population, I would be a little relieved as I would have thought the figures to be much worse than that. But then again, I'm pessimistic when it comes to my expectations of humanity.
• I suspect there is an element of interpretation involved in the responses to the survey: for one thing, there's an equivocation going on between causal responsibility and moral responsibility. So many respondents thought they were answering a question equivalent to "If a woman wears revealing clothing and flirts with a man, does that, as a matter of fact, make it statistically more likely that he will make sexual advances, up to and including rape?". The positive response is then interpreted as though the question had been: "If a woman wears revealing clothing and flirts with a man, does that mean she has declared herself 'fair game' and that she has only herself to blame for anything that may happen?", which is obviously repugnant.
• I'm with Gram'ma on this one. Nobody needs a shag that badly that they can't stop themselves, and nobody is ever really asking for it. Not rape, anyway. I've met a couple of blokes who did seem to want me to fight them, but even then I managed not to. Cut 'em off, or make them cut 'em off themselves. In public. With a spoon. Once found guilty in a court of law, that is.
• > he will make sexual advances, up to and including rape? rape is not some sort of "higher level" sexual advance. it's a violent attack.
• There's lots of grey areas in this. I always disliked the idea that "blaming the victim" is supposedly what people think, instead of "I'm sorry that happened to you, it's terrible yes, but you should have known better and hopefully you'll learn from it." There's a difference, and it's an important one, I think. Also from the article it says 34% think a woman is partially or totally responsible. There's quite a difference between partially and totally. Please don't take the procceeding thoughts as condoning rape or blaming the person. I'm simply saying that women have to be careful at times and realize that we (humans) ARE animals and can and will do terrible things to one another. One line of thought I've heard is that a woman should be able to walk around naked at 3am in a seedy part of town and not feel threatened. Well, yeah, and there should be world peace too, but neither is going to happen, so lets be realistic about this. Finally, just a reminder that this is NOT condoning or blaming rape. By all means flirt and what not, but be careful about when and who you do it with. There's some people with bad wiring in their head that can't or won't understand no.
• How often does rape happen to women walking around naked through a seedy part of town at 3:00 a.m.?
• rape is not some sort of "higher level" sexual advance. You surely don't think that's what I meant? If I say I'm used to all forms of discussion on this site, up to and including egregious misrepresentation, I'm not asserting that egregious misrepresentation is a "higher level" argument, nor that it is just an extreme version of normal and admissible argument.
• my point is that there is a distinct separation between "sexual behavior" and "violent behavior". i'm not trying to misrepresent what you said, but i understood "sexual advances, up to and including rape" as defining a range of sexual advances, within which rape was an extreme form (higher level was not a good descriptor, but i was trying to express the sense of continuum). if you say you are used to all forms of discussion, up to and including egregious misrepresentation, i interpret this as stating: 1. there is a range of discussion 2. egregious misrepresenation is at one extreme of this range. i *think* this is normal usage.
• Mmmm... ianal. in the US, if you get into an automobile accident... don't the insurance companies raise your rates anyway, even if you didnt 'cause' the accident? ie, they consider you 10% (or whatever %) liable or negligent just for being there and stuff. is this true or not?
• rape is not some sort of "higher level" sexual advance. it's a violent attack Traditionally, yes. But the new definitions include non-violent sexual advances that were not explicitly approved in advance by the party in question. I believe these expanded definitions of rape, and the catch-all 'sexual assault' which includes touching a woman's buttocks, have the unintended effect of diluting the impact of violent rape in many people's minds. And I think that's primarily responsible for the unusually high numbers in this poll.
• I believe these expanded definitions of rape, and the catch-all 'sexual assault' which includes touching a woman's buttocks, have the unintended effect of diluting the impact of violent rape in many people's minds. Rape is rape, isn't it? You'll almost certainly be able to find a legal definition of it as it applies in your criminal code. After establishing whether or not rape (sex without consent) has occurred, I assume other factors (ie whether accompanied by violence, etc) are taken into account in sentencing.
• In addition, it's common here in Australia [1] for an alleged violent rapist to be charged with several crimes, including rape, assault and often deprivation of liberty. For example. [1] But may differ elsewhere?
• roryk:i think one major problem with our perception of rape is that it continues to be treated as concerning sex rather than concerning violence. planetthoughtful:After establishing whether or not rape (sex without consent) has occurred, I assume other factors (ie whether accompanied by violence, etc) are taken into account in sentencing. Without particularly taking sides on this, I'd like to point out that there is in fact a total disjoint of perception on what rape actually consists of. When it's a violent crime, it's a violent crime. When you expand the definition to include the case where the playing around goes too far without anyone explicitly giving consent, and it turns out that one of the participants was in fact against that happening... I don't know. I know they're both damaging, but I don't think you can call some cases violent crimes. I don't really have anything useful to say, except to point out what others have said, that there would be a significant difference in what I'd expect for poll numbers depending on whether one was asking about violent rapes or rapes having to do primarily with lack of established consent. It's hard to have a discussion about things unless everyone agrees on a definition for them.
• Without particularly taking sides on this, I'd like to point out that there is in fact a total disjoint of perception on what rape actually consists of. When it's a violent crime, it's a violent crime. Again, I don't know how this works elsewhere, but that isn't the case in Australia. A violent rape is, in fact, several crimes. Being, as mentioned above, rape (sex without consent), assault (the violence), and usually deprivation of liberty (akin to a form of unlawful imprisonment / coercion). The point I'm trying to make is that, at least in Australia, there isn't any concept of 'a more acceptable form of rape' (and, personally, nor should there be). You will answer the same definition of a rape charge if you have nonconsenting sex with a person who is, for example, intoxicated and unable to resist or indicate consent, as you will if you have nonconsenting sex with a person where you use violence to make them comply. In other words, rape is rape. If you also used violence, then you will also answer other charges that will deal with those aspects of your actions explicitly.
• The point I'm trying to make is that, at least in Australia, there isn't any concept of "a more acceptable form of rape" Umm, yes there is such a concept. Go do a survey, like this one. Plenty of idiots will have that concept. Or do you mean "a more acceptable form of being guilty of one of the crimes pertaining to sexual assualt"? Because you could well argue that there is in the minds of judges, as exemplified by differing sentencing decisions. My understanding was that the crime that people are charged with in Australian jurisdictions that equates to the non-lawyers concept of rape is called "sexual assault" or one or more of its variations. Here is a list of some such crimes from the New South Wales Crimes Act, which indicates the plurality of "rape": Division 10 - Offences in the nature of rape, offences relating to other acts of sexual assault etc ... 61I. Sexual assault [max 14 year sentence] 61J. Aggravated sexual assault [max 20 year sentence] 61JA. Aggravated sexual assault in company 61K. Assault with intent to have sexual intercourse 61L. Indecent assault 61M. Aggravated indecent assault 61N. Act of indecency ... My understanding was that "rape" as prosecuted in Australian jurisdictions e.g. NSW, is not even "rape". It is one or more crimes pertaining to sexual assault, which can differ in respect of e.g. whether violence is offered in their commission. But then again I ain't been down your way for many a year! Well, two.
• But, planetthoughtful, what is considered sex for your definition of rape? Is groping rape?(here's a definition just so I'm clear: intimately touching an individual without consent whether it be on the genitals, ass or, frankly, pretty much anywhere on their body - this really depends on the type of touching i.e. not a tap on the shoulder, but it can almost all be groping to the individual touched) Groping is considered sexual assault. There are no "rape" laws in Canada. Rape is considered aggravated sexual assault when the accused wounds, maims or endangers the life of the involved victim (physically, people please, let's not split hairs). Therefore, date rape/acquaintance rape, marital rape are all considered sexual assault (statutory rape in canada falls into sexual interference which is used for all sorts of pederast related crimes). Along with kissing, touching, oral sex and a foot rub - whether or not they occur singly or in variations of multiples. What this means is that a man who has coerced sex from his wife for ten years on a near daily basis and a man who has fallen in a crowd and touched a woman's thigh on the way to prevent complete loss of balance both carry the label of sexual assault if they were both convicted. Likely, this isn't to happen, but it could. Added to the confusion consent in Canada brings in interesting factors such as having sex with your wife after having several drinks. She technically cannot form consent after inebriation. Did you just perform a sexual assault? Technically, yes. This gets scarier when laws are passed that allow police authorities to press chrages even if the victim won't. This is usually used in cases of domestic violence where the victim feels too much fear to prosecute against a domineering spouse. I'm sure that in most cases these incidents are heavily reviewed, however there is room for horrendous reputation/life destroying error. I'm not anal, though, I just read laws. More celebrity testosterone fun. I am not positive but I believe "rape" is still legislated in the USA in areas.
• Common law crime too.
• there isn't any concept of 'a more acceptable form of rape' (and, personally, nor should there be). yay! lets throw all reason out the window and strip judges of the power to consider any mitigating circumstances and make a reasonable decision. It's worked SO well in the war on drugs...
• The law is an ass. It's too bad there's such a fantastic amount of fairy dust in the air to the point where people can't use common sense and realize that there is a huge difference between a coworker goosing someone in the butt; a non-consensual act of sex between two adults who met in a bar, mutually agreed to go to an apartment, then one passed out; a woman who was attacked and raped at knife point, and a four year old being beated and raped to the point she will never be physically right again. I can't see why lobotomy wouldn't be a perfectly acceptable means of handling two out of four cases. I know the law is the only system we've got. But sometimes it's pretty feeble.
• I can't see why lobotomy wouldn't be a perfectly acceptable means of handling two out of four cases. You're right. it's perfectly reasonable, just, and in line with our legal traditions. You live in Saudi Arabia too, right?
• Certainty is the problem, BlueHorse. "Beyond reasonable doubt" doesn't necessarily mean that unresonable doubt isn't closer to the truth. After all, there have been alleged rapists released from prison because DNA technology corroborated their innocence after it reached legal usage. You can sort of take back incarceration; lobotomy, castration and death are permanent. Besides draconian legal tactics have no place in anything but a totalitarian state. Let the punishment not exceed the crime, otherwise it justifies exaggerated "victim" mentality and feeds into the terror mores (more-ays). It's not a great system, but it attempts through revision to provide a greater good for everyone. Knowing someone who was fraudulently accused of rape, which was subsequently dropped by the alleged victim and revealed as a hoax makes me wonder what would have happened to him if she had continued with the charges. Seeing as how the RCMP came to the party, questioned everyone who was there about the incident basically stamped him as "the rapist" to almost all of his acquantainces. Now if he were lobotomized before she fessed up... I personally don't like the idea of egocentric victims claiming rape to "take it back" or clean the slate, rather than exerting their rights from a valid response to harm.
• My understanding was that "rape" as prosecuted in Australian jurisdictions e.g. NSW, is not even "rape". It is one or more crimes pertaining to sexual assault, which can differ in respect of e.g. whether violence is offered in their commission. Again, IANAL (and, unfortunately, I lost easy access to one for the fun and frivolity of posing just these sorts of questions to, as a result of my not-so-long-ago divorce), but as I understand it, sexual assault in at least Queensland isn't rape, it's a special definition of assault. In other words, you could well be charged with committing two separate crimes, rape and sexual assault. At trial, the burden of proof can be met for either for a criminal conviction to be recorded. To add what little weight I can to this observation, Rape and Sexual Assault are defined in two separate sections of the Queensland Criminal Code (sections 349 and 352). For the purposes of criminal prosecution in Queensland, if you forcefully pushed a person against a wall and grabbed his or her groin (or, for that matter, you just grabbed another person's groin without that person's consent), you could be charged with sexual assault, but presumably not rape, since the Queensland Criminal Code's definition of rape relies on an act of penetration taking place. I've just taken a poorly-informed glance through the relevant sections of the NSW Criminal Code. For the purposes of comparison, it seems the QLD Criminal Code's definition of rape equates to the NSW definition of sexual assault (so, seems like you're right on the money, in terms of NSW). NSW has a separate chargeable offence of indecent assault, which I believe is covered by QLD's section on sexual assault. And it seems that in NSW you would be charged with aggravated sexual assault, or perhaps even aggravated sexual assault inflicting actual bodily harm (see), whereas in Queensland you'd be charged with rape and whichever applicable form of assault covered any acts of violence committed. So, looks like I'm going to have to retract "in Australia" and issue "in some parts of Australia" in its place, with apologies to all concerned, and perhaps some home detention, just to make damn certain these things don't happen again.
• yay! lets throw all reason out the window and strip judges of the power to consider any mitigating circumstances and make a reasonable decision. It's worked SO well in the war on drugs... I'm not sure why a basic legal definition of rape covering any act of non-consensual sex (or related non-consensual penetration) means that judges are being violated in their power to consider mitigating circumstances, should that be appropriate. Although, what exactly would be the mitigating circumstances for rape? She was asking for it? And which war on drugs are we talking about? I hadn't realized Australia had declared a war on drugs, since we'd be hard pressed to declare war on Tasmania, and we own that god-forsaken (though rather staggeringly beautiful) island.
• I thought this post was based on a UK poll?
• looks like I'm going to have to retract "in Australia" and issue "in some parts of Australia" in its place OK, I see. Presumbly there would be a survey of different sexual assualt regimes in Australian jurisdictions somewhere ... *googles* ... here perhaps, wait Hmmm. That last link says the crime is indeed called rape in 4 out of 8 criminal jurisdictions in Oz. We tie this round planetthoughful, but next time - I WILL CRUSH YOU LIKE BUG! Yours sincerely,
• That last link says the crime is indeed called rape in 4 out of 8 criminal jurisdictions in Oz. Good find, tqd. We tie this round planetthoughful, but next time - I WILL CRUSH YOU LIKE BUG! Yeah, looks like I'm fully booked for being crushed like a bug until at least mid-January. I can fit you in for 15 minutes of treating me with the contempt I so richly deserve next Thursday. How's that at your end? Yours sincerely You say it, but, like, do you really feel it?
• Next Thursday I will be pressuring people like elephant or squeezing them like tapir. Best to leave it til the new year, I think.
• Back on topic, this recent judgment of a rape case in the UK makes me so angry. This judgement will send a message to potential rapists that it's okay to assault someone who's drunk to the point of incapacity. Which will boil down, in the minds of many people, to "it's not rape if s/he's drunk." This case is going to lead to very bad things.
• This judgement will send a message to potential rapists that it's okay to assault someone who's drunk to the point of incapacity. Yes, that's very, very depressing. I'm completely stunned by the quote that "drunken consent is still consent". I wonder how many confessions offered by an accused who was noticeably under the influence of alcohol at the time of the confession would stand up in a UK court?
• It's not a confession. It's consent. Or is every case of sex after drinking going to be considered rape?
• It's not a confession. It's consent. Yes. What gave it away? The use of the word confession? I guess the point I was trying to make is that if a confession delivered under the influence of alcohol would be considered legally questionable, how can consent given under the influence of alcohol be considered actual consent? Maybe I'm wildly wrong, but that seems like some sort of double-standard. Or maybe we're disagreeing based on personal interpretations of 'under the influence of alcohol.' Or is every case of sex after drinking going to be considered rape? Um. No. I don't imagine it will be. But, there's a wide gulf between "we had a couple of drinks, and had consenting sex," versus "she was so trashed that friends were concerned for her safety and well-being". But let me play the extremist accusation game too -- are we now going to say that it's perfectly okay to consider people with developmental challenges as being able to understand what's being asked, and provide binding consent, when someone says "would you like to have sex with me?" If not, what would be the difference between the state this woman is described to have been in and that situation, aside from the fact that the woman in question is going to sober up and realize what has happened?
• > the woman in question is going to sober up and realize what has happened? but in this case she didn't realize what had happened, only that something had happened. what a mess... i don't think the court had a choice given (1) that she acknowledged she had no memory of the events (2) that she didn't know what had happened until the guy was questioned hopefully the case will result in a lot more caution re who escorts whom home.
• In both cases you're putting the onus on the man to properly ascertain the level of inebriety or developmental handicap. Where would you put the dividing line between acceptable and unacceptable behaviour? Would you consider him a criminal rapist if he simply underestimates the level of impairment? In the case of drunken consent, would it make a difference if he was also drunk? There are certainly cases where men purposely take advantage of overly drunk women...even unconscious women, and these should be treated accordingly. In the case referenced in Pallas Athena's link, there didn't seem to be any evidence of that being the case.
• (1) that she acknowledged she had no memory of the events (2) that she didn't know what had happened until the guy was questioned I very much understand that some cases are untriable (?) when all you have to go on is conflicting testimony from the two parties involved. It's the blanket assertion that "drunken consent is still consent" that troubles the hell out of me, for the same reasons that Pallas Athena mentions, and which are also highlighted in the article. hopefully the case will result in a lot more caution re who escorts whom home. The article isn't exactly clear about the whole situation, but it does mention that the defendant was a part-time security guard at the college. I imagine the young woman's friends thought they were being cautious about who they asked to escort her home.
• I guess the point I was trying to make is that if a confession delivered under the influence of alcohol would be considered legally questionable, how can consent given under the influence of alcohol be considered actual consent? I'm not trying to defend the "drunk consent", but if you are driving your car drunk you're breaking the law. There's no blanket "inability to form intent" defense for vehicular manslaughter while drunk, but there is one for manslaughter while drunk, at least in Canada. Yay! Law wins, brains remain confused by arbitrary values, because they make oddly make sense in our normative society. Is this a backwards dimension?
• It's the blanket assertion that "drunken consent is still consent" that troubles the hell out of me And your feeling troubled is certainly understandable, though the person doing the drinking has to take responsibility for how drunk s/he gets. Look, if I know that I make bad decisions when I get drunk, then it's up to me to either stop getting drunk or learn to live with my bad decisions. My giving drunken consent and regretting that the next day is not the same thing as getting raped while drunk. The difference is whether I have said "yes" or "no." IIRC, in ancient Greece, whenever someone tried to use drunkenness as a defense when charged with a crime ("I didn't know what I was doing"), the sentence would be doubled. The argument being that if you know you can't control yourself when you're drunk and got drunk anyway, then you've made two bad decisions and are therefore doubly responsible for the crime you committed. While this may seem harsh, I think there's a kernel of truth there. Especially when we're deciding whether or not to officially and forevermore apply the lovely label of RAPIST to an individual who might actually have thought he was having sex with a willing partner.