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[kevm3]

For serious?

If you murder someone while drunk, is it still murder?
If you steal something while drunk, is it still theft?
If you drive your goddamn car into a house while drunk, are you still destroying private property?

Why are you treating rape any differently?

So if a man who is really drunk had sex with a woman who wasn't drunk, he should be able to go to court and say she raped him right? He shouldn't have to pay any child support since he was raped and manipulated into sex while not in his right mind?

 

[coldvein]

You know if you've been raped.

not necessarily..

 

[CLEEK]

I mean, the point of the Yes Means Yes blog project that I mentioned in the beginning was about re-examining the issue of sexual consent from being a primarily negatory perspective where women have the ability to say 'No' to sexual activity into one where women feel empowered to pursue sex and deal with issues of female sexual autonomy and the shame. It is very much a sex positive perspective, and adding written consent forms isn't a part of the agenda. I think at most what is advocated is that partners have enthusiastic consent that goes beyond failing to say no or just going along with it, but is actively interested in it. I expect most people who have the social skills to get laid in the first place can tell if someone is genuinely interested, but perhaps I'm just an optimist.

I have had entirely consensual, sober sex where my parter was far from actively interested. Does that make me a rapist?

FWI - no, it just means that not every person s liberated enough to show active enjoyment/interest, even if they were internally enjoying it.

 

[Mumei]

There is something almost amusing about how a discussion around an article about rape by a woman who has actually written book and started a blog explicitly about getting women to let go of sexual shame, embrace sexual desire, debunking myths about male sexual aggressiveness, and whose only caveat on all this is that she is advocating a concept called enthusiastic consent is being turned into a "grrr evil feminists want to make sex all complicated and all sex will be rape (" discussion.

It really bears no resemblance to laws as they exist, and no one is even advocating that these laws be changed; what is being advocated is that our understanding of the model for a rapist who does this is not some good kid who just makes a mistake but a predator who plans and repeatedly rapes and that the law should investigate the accusation seriously rather than repeatedly assuming that there is an innocent explanation for it.

That's a moot point. It doesn't matter what was the original intention of legislation, or what scenarios you are discussing. 

The fact is, in some territories in the World, it is legally impossible for a man to have consensual sex with a woman. Legally, the man will raped her. That's insane. 

Ambiguous, poorly thought through legislation will always lead to miscarriages of justice and abuse. Rape laws need to be gender neutral. 

... They are? Or at least, the ones I am familiar with are. And we are talking more narrowly about the United States in this topic; you'll need to make a different topic if you want to talk about another country.

The bizarre exaggeration is simply the logical endpoint of explicit consent.

The issue primarily pertains to things like mutual drunkeness and post-sex regret.

Because unfortunately, in "less rapey cases of rape" (drunkeness, coercion, deception), there's little forensic evidence and boil down largely to a case of he said she said.

I think it's true that in some forms of rape it is more difficult to make a case. At the same time, I think it is important that we encourage those women to report nonetheless:

McWhorter used a Sexual Experiences Survey tool that has been in use for more than 20 years. Of her 1146 participants, 144, or 13%, admitted an attempted or completed rape — substantially higher than Lisak & Miller. But in another respect, her work very much matched theirs: 71% of the men who admitted an attempted or completed rape admitted more than one, very close to Lisak & Miller's 63%. The 96 men who admitted multiple attempted of completed rapes in McWhorter's survey averaged 6.36 assaults each. This is not far from Lisak & Miller's average of 5.8 assaults per recidivist. Looked at another way, of the 865 total attempted or completed rapes these men admitted to, a staggering 95% were committed by 96 men, or just 8.4% of the sample.​

The men who rape by alcohol tend to do so repeatedly - on average having six victims. By your sixth victim, you don't get to keep claiming that it was a misunderstanding, that it was just a mistake, or that it won't happen again.

I have had entirely consensual, sober sex where my partner was far from actively interested. Does that make me a rapist?

Perhaps boring - sorry - but not a rapist.

 

[Deified Data]

In instances where both man and woman are drunk, have sex, and the act is later construed as rape...what makes the man more culpable in the rape than the woman? Outdated gender conventions of who can conceivably rape who? The very act of penetration itself? Or are both parties innocent of wrong-doing in such an instance?

 

[Atrus]

So if a man who is really drunk had sex with a woman who wasn't drunk, he should be able to go to court and say she raped him right? He shouldn't have to pay any child support since he was raped and manipulated into sex while not in his right mind?

Child support is often established independently of any other laws. While I suppose a raped man might try to make a case not to pay it, it would be virtually implausible that he wouldn't be expected to even if he did not intend for the child to exist and was technically raped to produce said child. Similar types of cases, namely with stolen sperm, seem to indicate this.

 

[les papillons sexuels]

So if a man who is really drunk had sex with a woman who wasn't drunk, he should be able to go to court and say she raped him right? He shouldn't have to pay any child support since he was raped and manipulated into sex while not in his right mind?

that whole double standard thing. Only women can be raped appearently. Men can't be raped by a women, getting a boner is consent or something like that it seems.

 

[kswiston]

The vast majority of human vs. human interaction are not conveyed through verbal transmission. How many women tell men that they now have the consent to grope their ass, or participate in a variety of actions on a play by play basis?

While I get what you are saying, and a lot of that sort of thing does depend on correctly reading non-verbal queues, you can still get hit with sexual harassment in many scenarios by reading them wrong. What you thought was happening leading up to that doesn't really matter.

 

[pigeon]

In instances where both man and woman are drunk, have sex, and the act is later construed as rape...what makes the man more culpable in the rape than the woman? Outdated gender conventions of who can conceivably rape who? The very act of penetration itself? Or are both parties innocent of wrong-doing in such an instance?

Why is this whole thread about discussing an act everybody agrees isn't rape and shouldn't be considered rape, when it's actually supposed to be about rape?

 

[Ri'Orius]

Because the law in some countries (Scotland, for one) explicit states that drunk women can't give consent. Which is one of the more ludicrous pieces of legislation in the World.

Think this through logically. Once a woman has voluntarily drunk or takes substances, she is not legally responsible any more for her actions. Not only does it discriminate in law between the genders (and it covers woman only, not male or trans-gender rape), the though process that drunk women are not legally responsible for their actions is insane. Does that mean drunk women can't be changed for drink driving, or any other crime they commit while intoxicated?

Feminist policies are dangerous. Surely the goal should be political and legal egalitarianism for all genders, races etc, not new laws (the Scottish law was passed in 2009) that explicitly discriminate against genders.

You're taking the law to wild extremes. It doesn't say that drunk people aren't "legally responsible for their actions," merely that (as you correctly state) they can't give consent.

And yeah, the current Scottish law is wrong. The law only covers rapes in which the rapist has a penis (not necessarily that the rapist is a man, though). Evidence that even now our laws are sorely outdated (before the 2009 update, the law in Scotland was apparently "a crime at common law which consisted of the carnal knowledge of a female by a male person without her consent").

But I haven't read any feminists claiming that the law should explicitly protect women only. That doesn't sound like feminist philosophy, that sounds like /r/MensRights's views of feminist philosophy.

 

[TUROK]

I don't really get this concern. I feel like people think that feminists want to take away every ounce of spontaneity from sex and turn it into this minefield of potential legalistic rape scenarios in which you are wholly at the mercy of some woman claiming that you raped her or something.

That's pretty much where we are right now.

This doesn't mean that there is a prevalence of false rape cases, but the notion that they can happen so easily obviously has dudes worried, and there seems to be very little being done to address this.

Of course, bringing this up always results in people complaining about men bringing up their problems in what is supposed to be a discussion about women's problems.

Men want to protect their asses as much as women do.

Why is this whole thread about discussing an act everybody agrees isn't rape and shouldn't be considered rape, when it's actually supposed to be about rape?

Probably because this is still tried as rape against the woman (despite the gender neutrality of rape laws, although to be fair, they weren't gender neutral until recently), and I haven't seen feminists take this into account. It's always about what IS rape, but not about what ISN'T.

 

[Deified Data]

Why is this whole thread about discussing an act everybody agrees isn't rape and shouldn't be considered rape, when it's actually supposed to be about rape?

Because the topic wouldn't exist without contributors taking the subject into tangents.

"No means no". The baseline of rape is well-established. The topic at hand is how that definition should or shouldn't be expanded, and the context and finer points of consent. What thread have you been in?

 

[CLEEK]

Perhaps boring - sorry - but not a rapist.

My tounge in cheek point was to show that if the goal of campaigns like Yes Means Yes are to influence the judicial system - either explicitly through legislation, or by changing the views of potential jurors - its flawed and ambiguous. If you put 'active interest' as a legal caveat, that's entire open to interpretation, which is the polar opposite of fair and equal justice.

 

[Atrus]

Yeah, just baffling to me. You people engage in sex, from flirting to climax, without anybody at any point using words to suggest they're interested in sex? Even during? Because that suggests to me you're doing it wrong. I'm confident "Let's fuck" could fit into nearly any sexual scenario without wildly deranging it.

Maybe not the Deaf School fantasy.

There is no singular consent for sex.

Do you ask for consent to grope a breast or ass during sex? Do you ask consent before you go down on a girl during sex? Is everything done to a guy consented to?

Each element requires a completely separate form of consent. There is no legal carte blanche consent to sex as the manner and actions undertaken differ based on the individual.

 

[travisbickle]

that whole double standard thing. Only women can be raped appearently. Men can't be raped by a women, getting a boner is consent or something like that it seems.

What the fuck are you on about? There are laws about women raping men.

As for the erection being consent, I think you're falling into the territory of was it "rape rape" or just "rape"?

 

[pigeon]

TThis doesn't mean that there is a prevalence of false rape cases, but the notion that they can happen so easily obviously has dudes worried, and there seems to be very little being done to address this.

What do you suggest be done to address it?

Because the topic wouldn't exist without contributors taking the subject into tangents.

"No means no". The baseline of rape is well-established. The topic at hand is how that definition should or shouldn't be expanded, and the context and finer points of consent. What thread have you been in?

I don't see how your post fits in.

In instances where both man and woman are drunk, have sex, and the act is later construed as rape...

If we're talking about how the definition should be expanded, how does it matter how it's construed? What matters is what happened. That's what's relevant to any discussion of the appropriate definition of rape.

 

[Zaptruder]

There is something almost amusing about how a discussion around an article about rape by a woman who has actually written book and started a blog explicitly about getting women to let go of sexual shame, embrace sexual desire, debunking myths about male sexual aggressiveness, and whose only caveat on all this is that she is advocating a concept called enthusiastic consent is being turned into a "grrr evil feminists want to make sex all complicated and all sex will be rape (" discussion.

It really bears no resemblance to laws as they exist, and no one is even advocating that these laws be changed; what is being advocated is that our understanding of the model for a rapist who does this is not some good kid who just makes a mistake but a predator who plans and repeatedly rapes and that the law should investigate the accusation seriously rather than repeatedly assuming that there is an innocent explanation for it.



... They are? Or at least, the ones I am familiar with are. And we are talking more narrowly about the United States in this topic; you'll need to make a different topic if you want to talk about another country.



I think it's true that in some forms of rape it is more difficult to make a case. At the same time, I think it is important that we encourage those women to report nonetheless:

McWhorter used a Sexual Experiences Survey tool that has been in use for more than 20 years. Of her 1146 participants, 144, or 13%, admitted an attempted or completed rape — substantially higher than Lisak & Miller. But in another respect, her work very much matched theirs: 71% of the men who admitted an attempted or completed rape admitted more than one, very close to Lisak & Miller's 63%. The 96 men who admitted multiple attempted of completed rapes in McWhorter's survey averaged 6.36 assaults each. This is not far from Lisak & Miller's average of 5.8 assaults per recidivist. Looked at another way, of the 865 total attempted or completed rapes these men admitted to, a staggering 95% were committed by 96 men, or just 8.4% of the sample.​

The men who rape by alcohol tend to do so repeatedly - on average having six victims. By your sixth victim, you don't get to keep claiming that it was a misunderstanding, that it was just a mistake, or that it won't happen again.



Perhaps boring - sorry - but not a rapist.

Fair enough. So the weight of evidence and circumstance will damn you kind of situation. Maybe the first time or two is something where doubt can be applied in accusations. But more than that, and the number of allegations made against you in the circumstances becomes a form of evidence in itself.

Is that something that has been or can be codified as law however?


Also, I'm not inherently at a disagreement about the pro-sex 'enthusiastic consent' idea... I just believe that the balance been moved further in that direction (because men by default grant enthusiastic consent automatically) will have a chilling effect on the instances of impulsive sexuality.

It's not impossible for an individual to balance the clarity of consent with the impulsivity of sex; not at all. But at the same time, it's fool hardy to assume that it's something that comes naturally to everyone.

The current state of affairs are such that women are handed all the practical gender and legal power in determining their partners (because by default men automatically grant 'enthusiastic consent').

But our current reality is also that culture still has the man as the courter or initiator in a relationship. The more barriers there are up for sex (and it's reasonable and necessary to have some barriers), the less initiations that are made.

I guess the trick here is to get the ladies to become more like men in the sense that; sex is a great thing, let's do it more and more often! Then everyone can enthusiastically consent all the time.

But we've got a long way to go before we get there.

 

[Devolution]

A couple of my friends have been raped due to the notion that a drunk girl is "asking for it." So some of the carte blanche denial of this, in this very thread, is pretty sheltered.

 

[User 100115]

In response to those who quoted me, just like you are reasonably sure if you have been raped, I think the other side would be obvious too. I kinda think you'd know if you'd raped someone. Purposefully getting someone completely wasted while you remain mostly sober in order to have sex with them is rape.

Don't worry, if you are a good person, you won't be raping people.

Everyone is so incredibly defensive about this subject. It really, really shows how wide spread the whole 'you better watch out, cause most girls like to cry false rape!' is.

Yeah, it happens. But the fact is that reporting a rape is fucking traumatic to go through, and no one is going to do it for fun.

 

[Deified Data]

I don't see how your post fits in.

If we're talking about how the definition should be expanded, how does it matter how it's construed? What matters is what happened. That's what's relevant to any discussion of the appropriate definition of rape.

In the legal sense, the perception is all that matters. Either an act is perceived as rape or not. If you find my contribution to the thread lacking, don't respond to it.

 

[Devolution]

In response to those who quoted me, just like you are reasonably sure if you have been raped, I think the other side would be obvious too. I kinda think you'd know if you'd raped someone. Purposefully getting someone completely wasted while you remain mostly sober in order to have sex with them is rape.

Don't worry, if you are a good person, you won't be raping people.

Everyone is so incredibly defensive about this subject. It really, really shows how wide spread the whole 'you better watch out, cause most girls like to cry false rape!' is.

Yeah, it happens. But the fact is that reporting a rape is fucking traumatic to go through, and no one is going to do it for fun.

Every rape thread is the same thing. People getting hostile over the idea of enthusiastic consent as if it's disappointing or impossible to gauge consent verbally without ruining the mood. Tells you something doesn't it.

 

[TUROK]

What do you suggest be done to address it?

Some people have suggested harsh penalties against those who submit false rape reports, but others argue that this will discourage true victims from coming forth, which can be a valid argument. So I dunno. Compromise is ideal, though.

In response to those who quoted me, just like you are reasonably sure if you have been raped, I think the other side would be obvious too. I kinda think you'd know if you'd raped someone. Purposefully getting someone completely wasted while you remain mostly sober in order to have sex with them is rape.

Don't worry, if you are a good person, you won't be raping people.

Everyone is so incredibly defensive about this subject. It really, really shows how wide spread the whole 'you better watch out, cause most girls like to cry false rape!' is.

Yeah, it happens. But the fact is that reporting a rape is fucking traumatic to go through, and no one is going to do it for fun.

Just because statistically speaking it doesn't happen often, doesn't mean people shouldn't be worried about it.

Also, nobody here is saying or even implying that most women will cry rape. We are just trying to cover our asses in the off chance it does happen.

Every rape thread is the same thing. People getting hostile over the idea of enthusiastic consent as if it's disappointing or impossible to gauge consent verbally without ruining the mood. Tells you something doesn't it.

Lol, I agree. Every rape thread is the same thing. People somehow never get that verbal consent is not evidence that can hold up in court. How does one prove that someone gave consent without any sort of recording device or a third-party present in the room?

Even then, it's still pretty shitty to have to say "yes" in regard to sex every time you wanna fuck.

 

[Atrus]

Every rape thread is the same thing. People getting hostile over the idea of enthusiastic consent as if it's disappointing or impossible to gauge consent verbally without ruining the mood. Tells you something doesn't it.

Or perhaps they could be concerned about the lack of protections offered to legitimate sexual encounters outside of having to trust their partners, who in this day can be anyone met briefly, whilst their partners have the full force of the law behind them regardless.

You know... something reasonable and rational minded given the weight of the consequences otherwise.

 

[Zaptruder]

Every rape thread is the same thing. People getting hostile over the idea of enthusiastic consent as if it's disappointing or impossible to gauge consent verbally without ruining the mood. Tells you something doesn't it.

That GAF is full of secret-rapists?

 

[IrishNinja]

Definitely grabbing that purity myth book. Thanks.

yeah, i was eyeing that one earlier too. it's $11.53 at amazon, digi about the same price.

 

[Mumei]

The point is that there are many, many people that believe what some of these guys say is true. Ask a typical collage bro type if getting a girl drunk enough that she can't walk and then having sex with her is rape and he'll say no. The many examples in the article about actual court cases prove that a lot of people don't think it's actually rape unless unless there's a ton of force involved.

I'm going back to this post because I was just reminded of this:

What's wrong with the date-rape debate is that until recently men were not included in the discussion. This changed when UCLA psychologist Neil Malamuth surveyed male students' "attraction to sexual aggression." In his research, between 16 and 20 percent of the male respondents said they would commit rape if they could be certain of getting away with it. That's one in six. When Malamuth changed the word "rape" to "force a woman to have sex," between 36 percent and 44 percent said they would - as long as they could be certain they wouldn't be caught. In another study, 15 percent of college men said they actually had used force at least once to obtain intercourse - a rate which does seem to corroborate the statistics provided by women.

The question for us, then, is why? Why would nearly two of every five college males in this study commit sexual assault if they believed they could get away with it? For one thing, it has to do with some distorted ideas about women and sex. As we have seen, many men subscribe to what sexual assault counselors call "date rape myths" - that women want sex just as much as men do but are socialized to say no even if they mean yes; that women like to be forced to have sex; that drunk women are "fair game". In some interesting research in Germany, psychologists have found that "as long as rape myths are not openly challenged in social interactions, men who endorse rape myths may assume that their own beliefs are shared by many others." These distortions can lead men to think that a sexual assault is simply a sort of after-the-fact change of mind by a girl who really did want to, but then thought better of it.

As we have also seen, for many guys the drive to score is a male-male competitive drive, a sort of "keeping up with the Joneses" around sex. Guys' incessant predation turns out to be a form of compensation - a way for guys to keep up with impossibly high, but imagined, rates of sexual activity.​

- .Sauce

There's a lot more men who believe awful things than we might like to believe.

that whole double standard thing. Only women can be raped appearently. Men can't be raped by a women, getting a boner is consent or something like that it seems.

An erection is not evidence of consent, anymore than having a woman having an orgasm or feeling pleasure in the midst of a rape is evidence of her consent.

My tounge in cheek point was to show that if the goal of campaigns like Yes Means Yes are to influence the judicial system - either explicitly through legislation, or by changing the views of potential jurors - its flawed and ambiguous. If you put 'active interest' as a legal caveat, that's entire open to interpretation, which is the polar opposite of fair and equal justice.

I think that is where you are confused. This is a discussion about culture. I think that cultural understandings do influence the judicial system in a sort of indirect way, but most of what the article talks about are ways in which bad judicial and police decisions are made on the basis of cultural misapprehensions of rape and sexual assault. The object isn't to change those things by fiat; it is to change the culture that motivates those decisions.

And I said nothing about tying a definition of rape to a definition of active interest; again this is about changing people's perceptions of consent from one where it is just about the other person not saying no to one where the other person actively wants to say yes, where pleasure. This is not about a legalistic discussion of rape where we are talking about changing the definition of rape. Yes, this is a discussion about rape insofar as the authors believe that if we had a sex positive culture with an ethos of enthusiastic consent and an emphasis place on pleasure, and less shame attached to sex for women would result in less - not none, less - rape.

I guess the trick here is to get the ladies to become more like men in the sense that; sex is a great thing, let's do it more and more often! Then everyone can enthusiastically consent all the time.

But we've got a long way to go before we get there.

Interestingly:

A lot of women also have sex "like men" - that is, for pleasure. Ninety-seven percent of Americans will have sex before marriage, and 95 percent of American women use contraception at some point in their lives. The average American woman spends about three decades trying to prevent pregnancy. Clearly, women like sex - and they like it on their own terms and for recreation, not just for baby making.​

And this is basically what the idea of enthusiastic consent and Yes Means Yes is about - that women are sexual, that they do enjoy sex, and that a great deal of our cultural hang-ups and shame around female sexuality are what prevent more assertive expressions of sexual desire by women.

 

[User 100115]

Some people have suggested harsh penalties against those who submit false rape reports, but others argue that this will discourage true victims from coming forth, which can be a valid argument. So I dunno. Compromise is ideal, though.

Just because statistically speaking it doesn't happen often, doesn't mean people shouldn't be worried about it.

Also, nobody here is saying or even implying that most women will cry rape. We are just trying to cover our asses in the off chance it does happen.

Lol, I agree. Every rape thread is the same thing. People somehow never get that verbal consent is not evidence that can hold up in court. How does one prove that someone gave consent without any sort of recording device or a third-party present in the room?

The way everyone is reacting to this discussion makes it out that way. I am sure most of the people that rape aren't going to go around and say 'Oh yeah, I totally raped her/him.' They are going to tell all their friends and family that the victim is lying and making false charges. That's how the false rape myth spreads, because of course you are going to believe a friend over some random person.

If you aren't actually raping people you don't have to worry about it.

 

[TUROK]

The way everyone is reacting to this discussion makes it out that way. I am sure most of the people that rape aren't going to go around and say 'Oh yeah, I totally raped her/him.' They are going to tell all their friends and family that the victim is lying and making false charges. That's how the false rape myth spreads, because of course you are going to believe a friend over some random person.

If you aren't actually raping people you don't have to worry about it.

Why shouldn't we worry about it? It obviously happens. People don't typically worry about things in regard to probability, they worry about things in relation to the severity of them.

Your hypothetical situation is misleading, by the way. The person who was raped will probably have friends too, and they will probably believe that her rape accusation is true, so in the end, you have people on one side of the fence crying rape, and people on the other side of the fence crying false accusations.

 

[User 100115]

Why shouldn't we worry about it? It obviously happens. People don't typically worry about things in regard to probability, they worry about things in relation to the severity of them.

Because you are not raping people? There are far, far more rapes that go unreported than instances of false reporting. Can someone pull out some valid statistics on false reporting? I am going to bed.

Again, reporting a rape is an excruciating, humiliating process. No one is going to do it just for kicks.


On your edit: you'd be surprised how many people turn on the victim and pull together around the accused.

 

[TUROK]

Because you are not raping people? There are far, far more rapes that go unreported than instances of false reporting. Can someone pull out some valid statistics on false reporting? I am going to bed.

Again, reporting a rape is an excruciating, humiliating process. No one is going to do it just for kicks.

On your edit: you'd be surprised how many people turn on the victim and pull together around the accused.

I know you know that false reports do happen, no matter how frequent or infrequent they may be, so why do you keep acting like it's not something to worry about?

Fine. If men shouldn't worry about false rape accusations, women shouldn't worry about being raped while in dark alleys or other shady areas while they are by themselves, seeing as how most rapes are committed by someone the person knew.

 

[Zaptruder]

Because you are not raping people? There are far, far more rapes that go unreported than instances of false reporting. Can someone pull out some valid statistics on false reporting? I am going to bed.

Again, reporting a rape is an excruciating, humiliating process. No one is going to do it just for kicks.


On your edit: you'd be surprised how many people turn on the victim and pull together around the accused.

Although I get your points for the most part, if you're out to destroy someone, the 'excruciating, humiliating process' of reporting a rape isn't some impossibly high bar to vault over.

 

[SmokyDave]

For all the words in the OP, not one of them is 'prison'. Seems the author has a rape 'blind spot' of her own.

 

[Peagles]

Fantastic read, thanks Mumei.

 

[TheBryanJZX90]

Just because statistically speaking it doesn't happen often, doesn't mean people shouldn't be worried about it.

Also, nobody here is saying or even implying that most women will cry rape. We are just trying to cover our asses in the off chance it does happen.

The American justice system is designed to strike a balance between letting guilty people go free and between convicting innocent people. The presumption of innocence and the burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt means that in general we as a society would rather have, say, 10 guilty people walk free than imprison 1 innocent individual. Now, those numbers aren't going to be the same for everyone depending on who you talk to. It may well be that some individuals or even society as a whole actually would rather let 20 or even 100 guilty people go free than imprison 1 innocent individual. But I think that balance also changes for a lot of people depending on the crime.

So, I'd like to ask, what is the proper balance to you for rape charges? Does the nature of the crime change that balance? Would you rather 10 women be raped and have their rapist walk free than see 1 falsely accused man be convicted? Or would you rather 20 or 100 women be raped and not find justice than 1 innocent man be falsely convicted?

I realize that this is encouraging a bit of a thread derailment that has occurred from the original poster's intent to discuss the prevalence of "lesser" rape in the public discourse, but hopefully it is still close enough to the original topic to be worthwhile. I'd also be curious to see how the original poster would respond to my question above. Does the nature of the crime of rape mean that the balance created by the reasonable doubt standard should be changed?

 

[Vermillion]

A couple of my friends have been raped due to the notion that a drunk girl is "asking for it." So some of the carte blanche denial of this, in this very thread, is pretty sheltered.

I take it that they were ridiculously drunk to the point where they didn't consent in any way, right?

At any rate, I feel that guys trying to get girls super-drunk so they can have sex with them is part of why some just don't drink at parties, making them a bit less fun.

 

[TUROK]

The American justice system is designed to strike a balance between letting guilty people go free and between convicting innocent people. The presumption of innocence and the burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt means that in general we as a society would rather have, say, 10 guilty people walk free than imprison 1 innocent individual. Now, those numbers aren't going to be the same for everyone depending on who you talk to. It may well be that some individuals or even society as a whole actually would rather let 20 or even 100 guilty people go free than imprison 1 innocent individual. But I think that balance also changes for a lot of people depending on the crime.

So, I'd like to ask, what is the proper balance to you for rape charges? Does the nature of the crime change that balance? Would you rather 10 women be raped and have their rapist walk free than see 1 falsely accused man be convicted? Or would you rather 20 or 100 women be raped and not find justice than 1 innocent man be falsely convicted?

I realize that this is encouraging a bit of a thread derailment that has occurred from the original poster's intent to discuss the prevalence of "lesser" rape in the public discourse, but hopefully it is still close enough to the original topic to be worthwhile. I'd also be curious to see how the original poster would respond to my question above. Does the nature of the crime of rape mean that the balance created by the reasonable doubt standard should be changed?

I don't agree with the assertion that the American justice system is somehow purposely engineered to let a certain ratio of guilty people go in exchange for not imprisoning innocent people. Any time someone is falsely imprisoned or someone guilty is not convicted of a crime is a result of a multitude of factors, among those including inherent flaws in the justice system.

Will there ever be a point in which justice is served 100 percent of the time? No, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't strive for it, legally speaking.

So in regard to your ratio question, I can't answer it because I take issue with both people getting away with rape and people getting away with false accusations.

 

[A.E Suggs]

A lot of women also have sex "like men" - that is, for pleasure. Ninety-seven percent of Americans will have sex before marriage, and 95 percent of American women use contraception at some point in their lives. The average American woman spends about three decades trying to prevent pregnancy. Clearly, women like sex - and they like it on their own terms and for recreation, not just for baby making.[/indent]

And this is basically what the idea of enthusiastic consent and Yes Means Yes is about - that women are sexual, that they do enjoy sex, and that a great deal of our cultural hang-ups and shame around female sexuality are what prevent more assertive expressions of sexual desire by women.

I like this part, the problem here is that the situation will never be equal because man don't have to go through the process of getting an abortion. I don't think it was ever a problem of men knowing that woman love sex, is that man usually want more sex at more times than females. Having a child doesn't always fit into the equation or scare all woman from having sex, in fact it may scare the man more nowadays.

Very good read though.

 

[TheBryanJZX90]

I don't agree with the assertion that the American justice system is somehow purposely engineered to let a certain ratio of guilty people go in exchange for not imprisoning innocent people. Any time someone is falsely imprisoned or someone guilty is not convicted of a crime is a result of a multitude of factors, among those including inherent flaws in the justice system.

Will there ever be a point in which justice is served 100 percent of the time? No, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't strive for it, legally speaking.

So in regard to your ratio question, I can't answer it because I take issue with both people getting away with rape and people getting away with false accusations.

Obviously the justice system isn't perfect, no system can be. But what is the burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt if not an imperfect attempt to balance the mutually undesirable outcomes of letting a guilty man go free and convicting an innocent man?

Edit: I think I need to be a bit more explicit. When the concept of "proof beyond a reasonable doubt" was created, it wasn't the only possible standard we could have required in order to convict someone of a crime. Proof beyond a reasonable doubt is a very high standard, but not the highest. We also could have required that prosecutors prove their case "beyond all doubt" or "beyond a shadow of a doubt." By making the burden higher, it makes the prosecutor's job more difficult. If it's harder for the prosecution to prove their case, that means that more people that are factually guilty of crimes will get away with it because they didn't leave behind enough evidence for the prosecutor to prove their case beyond all doubt or beyond a shadow of a doubt, even if they have proved their case beyond a reasonable doubt. Then the ratios I was talking about earlier would change. Now the justice system would consciously be letting 1,000 or even 10,000 guilty criminals go free rather than convicting 1 innocent party.

Similarly, if the criminal justice system had instituted a lower burden like preponderance of the evidence (the standard for civil trials), more innocent people are going to be convicted than if the burden of proof is beyond a reasonable doubt, because it will be possible for prosecutors to meet that lower burden with less evidence and less convincing cases. So by choosing a lower burden like preponderance of the evidence the justice system would be implicitly be saying it is ok for 49 innocent people to be convicted as long as we can convict 51 guilty parties.

Feel free to quibble about what the actual ratios are under the reasonable doubt standard. But the choice to use reasonable doubt was done so with the knowledge that it will let more guilty parties go free than innocent people convicted. And I just wanted to know if you are ok with that in rape charges.

 

[scar tissue]

Is it still rape if both of them are really drunk?

No. If both are drunk, the guy is as much of a victim as the girl is.

As for guys getting chicks drunk and then having sex: where exactly is the border to rape?

Is it only rape when she becomes physically unable to resist? Or is it rape the moment her judgment becomes clouded (i.e. after the first or second drink)?

Is it always rape if one party is more intoxicated than the other?

Questions, questions.

 

[FyreWulff]

There does need to be a lot more education on this. So many people, especially young men, are led to believe that sex is something to have in any way possible. If you think asking the girl if she wants to have sex will make her say no, then you already know you shouldn't be doing it. But it's been beaten into your head that not "scoring" is unmasculine and a failure on your part, so you're conditioned to believe that pushing for it and then going ahead with the act even when you know she really doesn't want to is just fine.

To the ones that go "well, that ruins the moment" - if both participants want it, there's no way asking if they actually want to go through with it ruins anything. These are people that are outright saying "Actually asking if someone is fine ruins things for me, so I don't want to do it".


Then it works against male victims of rape as well. "Oh, quiet you, you actually enjoyed it." "I wish I was in that position man, stop bitching." "Every boy wants to have sex". "Why didn't you just throw her off of you?".

People try to define varying shades of sex and qualifiers and sex flow charts and venn diagrams because so many projectionists and so many people think you're accusing them of rape because you didn't get a signed 50 page contract before it happened. When we just need to realize both sides have an equal amount of say in not wanting sex. They don't need to supply a reason. No is no, and lack of no doesn't mean yes.

 

[kevm3]

This is going to come to a point to where men will ask women to start signing waiver forms before they start dealing with them.

 

[TUROK]

Obviously the justice system isn't perfect, no system can be. But what is the burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt if not an imperfect attempt to balance the mutually undesirable outcomes of letting a guilty man go free and convicting an innocent man?

That's definitely what the burden of proof is, but this is what you said:

The American justice system is designed to strike a balance between letting guilty people go free and between convicting innocent people.

Guilty people going free and innocent people being convicted are still undesirable circumstances, side effects of trying to be as just as possible for both accusers and accused.

 

[Kazerei]

There is something almost amusing about how a discussion around an article about rape by a woman who has actually written book and started a blog explicitly about getting women to let go of sexual shame, embrace sexual desire, debunking myths about male sexual aggressiveness, and whose only caveat on all this is that she is advocating a concept called enthusiastic consent is being turned into a "grrr evil feminists want to make sex all complicated and all sex will be rape (" discussion.

Seriously, this.

Sexual freedom for women will benefit everyone. Y'all should be supporting this.

 

[TheBryanJZX90]

That's definitely what the burden of proof is, but this is what you said: The American justice system is designed to strike a balance between letting guilty people go free and between convicting innocent people.

Guilty people going free and innocent people being convicted are still undesirable circumstances, side effects of trying to be as just as possible for both accusers and accused.

Yes, I said what you quoted from my post and I mean it. Please read my edited post above to understand why I said it. Sorry for the back and forth.

TLR for my above post:
The burden of proof in a criminal trial didn't have to be beyond a reasonable doubt. Choosing to make it beyond a reasonable doubt was a conscious decision with the knowledge that it will change the number of innocently convicted people and the number of guilty people let free. Thus, if you support the burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt you support that ratio, rather than the ratio of other burdens.

 

[Roland Deschain]

No. If both are drunk, the guy is as much of a victim as the girl is.

As for guys getting chicks drunk and then having sex: where exactly is the border to rape?

Is it only rape when she becomes physically unable to resist? Or is it rape the moment her judgment becomes clouded (i.e. after the first or second drink)?

Is it always rape if one party is more intoxicated than the other?

Questions, questions.

A bar is where guys go to pick up girls and vice versa. So unless you get the other party drunk off their feet and you stay sober with the sole intention to have sex with them in that condition, I don't think you can talk about rape.

 

[Shouta]

Obviously the justice system isn't perfect, no system can be. But what is the burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt if not an imperfect attempt to balance the mutually undesirable outcomes of letting a guilty man go free and convicting an innocent man?

"Burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt" is an aspect of our culture and is a result of a thirst for the truth. Many societies like the US are similar in that regard. It permeates our society and our values to a very high degree. In a way, the reason why people want to be clear of what is or isn't rape is because of this. They need to know ringing truth that is unquestionable. When that is clear, the actions one conducts can be justified or admonished with confidence.

At least that's how I feel.

 

[scar tissue]

lack of no doesn't mean yes.

Do I need her to sign a waiver each time? Is asking "Is it can be sex tiem nao plz?" sufficient?
Or do I need to recite the exact words of a legally defined question?

If I start touching/kissing her and she goes along with it, that should be enough. Fucking ridiculous.

A bar is where guys go to pick up girls and vice versa. So unless you get the other party drunk off their feet and you stay sober with the sole intention to have sex with them in that condition, I don't think you can talk about rape.

I'd say so too, but I'm pretty sure a lot of people would draw the line differently.
You could argue that because a girl was intoxicated, she had sex with a guy with whom she normally wouldn't have, and therefore it was rape. One feminist even said "If a girl feels violated afterwards, it was rape". I mean, what the fuck. This is some retcon bullshit. Either it is rape from the first second on, or it is not. You can't decide afterwards.

Seriously, this.

Sexual freedom for women will benefit everyone. Y'all should be supporting this.

Actually, no. Go watch Brainwash: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhULaCUqWWc

Women are still as picky and unwilling to have casual sex as ever. Women are simply not made to fuck around as much as men are.
20% of gay men has had over 1000 sex partners, 2% of all lesbian women has had over 100 and 0% have had over 1000.
Plus, women are more likely to choose "the bad boy" for casual sex, as compared to "the provider" for relationships. So actually, most guys on GAF - who are probably not "bad boys" - are going to have it harder, the more sexual freedom women have.

 

[kevm3]

Seriously, this.

Sexual freedom for women will benefit everyone. Y'all should be supporting this.

Women DO have sexual freedom. They can sleep with any man they want to... what is meant by sexual freedom exactly? That people shouldn't harbor negative opinions about women that sleep around?

 

[Kazerei]

Do I need her to sign a waiver each time? Is asking "Is it can be sex tiem nao plz?" sufficient?
Or do I need to recite the exact words of a legally defined question?

If I start touching/kissing her and she goes along with it, that should be enough. Fucking ridiculous.

Come on man, you're attacking a straw feminist.

Women DO have sexual freedom. They can sleep with any man they want to... what is meant by sexual freedom exactly? That people shouldn't harbor negative opinions about women that sleep around?

Look at our cultural attitudes. Women do not have the sexual freedom as men.

 

[scar tissue]

Come on man, you're attacking a straw feminist.

I was attacking the quote "Lack of no doesn't mean yes". Look, if a woman is unconscious or heavily intoxicated, I agree.
But if a woman is still capable of saying no and does not say no but instead goes along with it, that's a yes in my book.


Edit: Am I the only one who finds the term "rape survivor" weird? I get that it's about empowerment, but this is ridiculous.
I am not a "depression survivor", I'm suffering from depression. And you are not a "rape survivor", you're a rape victim.