Interesting. And, I do understand why one would think that because on paper it makes some sense as a theory. In real life I remain unconvinced because the truly problematic unwanted grabbing that I have experienced personally came from creeps who were not going to listen to yes or no. The rest of it we managed to figure out somehow. But, maybe that’s just me. I don’t know.
I read the story that LF linked to http://www.buzzfeed.com/jasonwells/brown-university-2-fraternities-facilitated-sexual-misconduc It talks about two students being given drinks laced with date rape drugs. It seems like I’ve read a lot about “roofies” recently. Is this really going on as much as it seems or is it just a handful of isolated cases that are being sensationalized? Does anyone know about this?
I was just out with a group of women who were saying that a close friend of theirs had been drugged at a bar (fortunately no sexual assault occurred because her boyfriend was there, but she had total memory loss and no motor control for 16 hours). They also said there is fingernail polish made so that women can discreetly test their drinks by tipping their fingernails into a drink (it changes color or something).
I can’t believe we’ve come to this. Brown students trying to drug their classmates ! Why on earth would you even want to do this. Just buy a blow-up doll already and be done with it. Buy two and be a real stud. This is so unlike me and my college friends that I can’t even conceive of it. On the other hand, guys do deliberately try to get their dates drunk, so maybe this is just viewed as the high-tech equivalent. Some days I’m ashamed to be a man. At the risk of being sexist I think the fact that 90+% of criminals are male says something deeply true and dark about the male psyche.
(Also, even though I’m the person who veered the thread onto affirmative consent I’m going stay away from it. There doesn’t seem to be much room for disagreement about the moral principles, just about what legal regime best encodes them.)
Marie: We figure it out because we are forced to do so to keep ourselves safe. The culture tells us from earliest childhood it is our responsibility to figure it out and we are taught strategies to avoid unwanted touching. We accept it as a given that touching is going to happen. Because this is the world in which we live, it is difficult to think about it clearly, that’s for sure.
I see many opinions here, not an us and them. Maybe you are in too close here, and this is too personal for you it seems.
It is a definite disservice to make this us and them. This is not about right or wrong, but about presenting logical arguments, which support one’s point. People are free to decide which argument makes most sense to them, not necessarily if one argument is more right or wrong than the other. Personal morals and values decide right or wrong, not what someone writes in a post.
Interesting though that presenting logical arguments to you is considered protesting. Hum… never been around such people before. The people I deal with never stop thinking and always take it up another notch, whatever that notch is. I more suspect the problem you have is I do not just walk away and let anyone say things that I think misrepresents a situation. That is the type of people I am used to and who I actively surround myself with - anything else would be like a cult.
Then please don’t target various posters telling us “we” need to consult an attorney or we don’t get it or we misinterpret you unfairly or you run a company so… or that I’m in too closely. Or that your wife and sister would certainly never find themselves in a frightening position because they have some special protective savvy. If you have daughters, I hope you will offer more support than, “You let your guard down,” etc.
Guess what? Most of the posters here are women and most of the men, imo, are trying to be respectful about the differences in perspective. Same goes for those of us who are parents to girls- we try to understand the concerns of parents of sons.
Think about what all this really means. Not just the extreme examples that shore up this “tough noogies” attitude.
Manage it?
You shouldn’t have to manage it.
I remember as a little kid in school being taught to keep your hands to yourself. That’s pretty good advice.
I am glad to see that awctnb’s firm doesn’t tolerate the butt slapping, etc.
I don’t think employees should have to manage it… Or students either.
"And I suspect this is what is happening to a lot of college females. Their intent is not to have sex, and they also have no intent to consent - they may even have thought how to act “no” and say no to sex. However, after ingesting alcohol, they can no longer act positively on that original intent and unfortunately do things that are completely contrary to that original intent. Then when they sober up, they panic and they say rape because they recall their original intent. "
And, of course, you would not hold yourself up under any obligation to be a gentleman under those circumstances and just ensure the lady got home safely, etc. If you wanted her, you’d take her. Once you get the ol’ stallion fired up and everything … why, there’s just nothing that can be done to stop it, eh?
"Therefore, if either of them put themselves in such a position, I would say, “You let your guard down by your own freewill by putting yourself in position where you could not think straight and you were doing things that you would not normally do. It is unfortunate what happened to you, but there are consequences when you purposely impair your ability to act your normal self. The world is full of lots of people, some very bad, and you have no control over their actions, only control over yours. Do not give bad people another opportunity to have control over you. Personal safety always comes first and remember never to give that up.”
Would that piece of advice equally apply to the male who took advantage of a drunken female because, well, you know, he’d gotten started and all and once you start something, you have to finish it?
"And there is even a more general, yet important use. In the case a person, any person, thinks there is an urgent need to contact you, i.e., there is smoke coming from the rear of your house of which you may not be aware. "
I’m sure you’re quite good and all, but your “need” to find a woman, or any woman’s “need” to have sex with you, doesn’t quite rise to the level of urgency of needing to find someone to rescue them from a burning building.
When I was in second grade, there was a little boy who kept trying to kiss me at recess, even though I told him “no” repeatedly. Sometimes he was successful. I told my father about it over dinner one night. Although his general rule of conduct for me had been, "keep hands to your hands to yourself’ he told me I was allowed to hit anyone who tried to kiss me. I decked that boy the next day.
Even though I can take care of myself, I would prefer not to have to do so. It’s very unpleasant.
adding: The little boy cried and went to report me to the teacher. I was called on the carpet and reprimanded for hitting. I told her my father had given me permission to hit if someone tried to kiss me. I was off the hook, but probably only because my father was not someone with whom they wanted to mess around.
So, basically, I was able to punch a kisser successfully because I had a powerful male protector. : (
At my DD’s school there is a frat the girls call the “roofie house” after some of her friends were drugged (luckily they were saved before something happened). Another good friend had a daughter who was “roofed” but who was also saved.
My guess is that it is a very small percentage but that it adds up to big numbers. If even .1% of girls at my kid’s school are subjected to being drugged by a date rape drug on a given party night you still end up with a big number throughout the year.
I just tried to google some stats and found this link to a DOJ study. https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/221153.pdf
In it .6% of women had been sexually assaulted after being given a date rape drug. That included only actual assaults, not the larger number of women who were drugged and then saved from an assault like my daughter’s friends.
The number of actual date rape drug sexual assaults was 33 out of 5466 women. I’m guessing the number of attempted druggings to be several orders of magnitude higher.
There are scum who attend or have attended Ivy League schools. What a shock. There are people with high intelligence and low morals. There are people who have access to illegal drugs and money to buy them.
Educate your children about what is assault. Yes, giving someone drugs without their knowledge, even alcohol, is ASSAULT and therefore ILLEGAL. It is a two-way street, maybe someone doesn’t see the harm in spiking the punch with something to “calm down the guests”. But that is assault. The person who unknowingly drinks a spiked drink is a victim. The police should be involved as soon as possible.
Think about the chances of the same thing being spotted in high school, before kids realize that a sip of an alcoholic beverage shouldn’t make them pass out and wake up 12 hours later with memory loss.
The touching thing is a slippery slope. If I caught a kid falling from a shopping cart because mom wasn’t watching and I happened to witness the fall, I could be sued if by doing so the child was injured or even if I grabbed him or her the wrong way. Regardless of whether I had a good reason to catch the kid, to avoid seeing brains splattered on the floor of the Shop N Go. (I actually did catch a kid once falling from a grocery cart, hopefully with no impropriety, and the mother THANKED me. Some people do recognize good will.)
But in real life, and I’ve dealt with this at work, “brushing” becomes a subject of sexual harassment investigations. And if you are at a party with many people, you might accidentally touch someone, but how could you tell if someone is really purposely groping you, if you are in a crowd? Let alone who it was? Groping is illegal, but so is hit and run. When it comes down to it, it may be completely impossible to determine who committed a hit and run if there were no witnesses and the result was death of the victim. So the police will investigate but may end up closing the case, even when a death occurred.
Compare that to “I was touched at a frat party”. Yes, that is really disgusting and illegal. But chances of it being investigated if the person was not witnessed doing it? Literally, one would have to set up hidden cameras and get lucky enough to witness it happening in the future (as with cooks contaminating their food with various substances or using expired food…).
I don’t think murder is a good example to compare to having sex. I think a better analogy is that when you have surgery, you are essentially agreeing to someone assaulting you - cutting your body, injuring you, you need to have medications during and afterwards. All for some expected good outcome. And a possible bad outcome. So saying yes to sex is saying yes to assault for some expected good outcome 
and hoping to avoid a bad outcome 
You have to jump through hoops to agree to surgery. Even something simple. Yes, we don’t want it to come to that, colleges requiring both parties (or all parties…) to sign waivers stating that yes, they are of sound mind, and yes, they agree to the events of a sexual nature that will follow. Probably put a disclaimer about a time limit, not to exceed one hour without additional documentation…
Think about it - if you wake up and someone stole your right kidney, you’d be pretty dang mad and a victim of assault. Unless you filled out paperwork first letting them take your kidney to donate to your bro.
Okay, now why would we create all of these hoops for people in college when that is merely four short years of your life and when you graduate the hoops are gone. Then what?
What hoops are you talking about, Marie?
If you are referring to affirmative consent, Cardinal Fang has told us it’s a legal requirement in CA outside of colleges. Unless I misunderstood her posts. If so, I’m still advocating for affirmative consent as a legal requirement for everyone, not just college students.
My biggest issue with all of this is the campus vs. criminal part of it. In other words, if the young woman wants an apology in the form of acknowledgement of wrongdoing in some of these situations and that is frequently the case as the young women themselves have so stated and she finds that in a college tribunal because of a lower proof requirement or a Title IX coordinator who is on her side or whatever that just makes the campus environment something other than reality which I have always found a bit odd. I do realize they are trying to create their own little bubbles of an alternate reality and all. But, I don’t get it or particularly think it’s a great idea. If rape is a bigger problem off campus, which it is, then all of this attention on campus rape which is inextricably co-mingled with campus alcohol consumption and campus miscommunication and campus inexperience is over-complicating a system that everyone agrees could use some attention but this particular attention seems a little misguided.
I’m referring to affirmative consent which is mostly just words that no-one else is going to hear anyway most of the time and not much help in the proof department and the lowering of the preponderance of evidence standard which I don’t think will hit the real world crime of rape anytime soon.
I have a few comments on some threads running through this conversation.
First, I think it’s important to recognize that there will be difficult cases. How do you deal with them, and who gets the benefit of the doubt? In the criminal law system, the accused gets the benefit of the doubt, which is why we have the requirement for proof beyond a reasonable doubt, in addition to a lot of other protections. So, for example, if we have a criminal rape case involving a claim of incapacitation and a defense of consent, we have a jury deciding “how drunk is too drunk to consent.” But that jury has to apply the “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard, it has been supervised and instructed by a trained judge, and the accused has had numerous other protections. It appears that in the context of a college adjudication, that there is support for the idea that neither the accused nor the accuser gets the benefit of the doubt–so the preponderance of the evidence standard is used. Arguably, the benefit of the doubt goes more to the accuser, because the accused also often does not get many of the other protections available to criminal defendants. I think this arrangement is appropriate when the college is adjudicating a dispute between two students (it’s much the same as a civil case then), but not when the issue (and the potential punishment) are so much closer to criminal. That’s what I’ve been saying all along, I think.
I wonder about affirmative consent, as well. If it includes consent by action, then maybe I can agree with it. But to take an example given upthread: say I have a close friend, and we visit each other’s homes all the time. In fact, we’re so close that we don’t even knock after a while, we just open the door, step in and call out, “Yoo hoo!” Should my friend be able to have me arrested for trespassing the twentieth time I do this, without warning me in advance? If I’m sitting in the movie theater with my girlfriend, am I doing something wrong if I put my arm around her without a verbal request if I’ve done this numerous times in the past? How may times should I get a verbal OK before a pattern of consent has been established? I don’t think these are easy questions to answer.
Marie, if you had been victim to this, would an apology be uppermost in your mind? I think it would be protection/feeling safe, getting any medical and emotional support, before an apology.
Whether or not it is a bigger problem off-campus, if something happens to your daughter at college, we want her to get the support she needs, while she’s at college. And then the college is supposed to do a bit more: it is supposed to protect her if she is concerned about running into the accused in the dorm, in class or on campus. And other ways. And then the school is supposed to take up the matter, look into it, and come to some conclusion. That’s what I would want for my girls.
It gets confusing because some paint a picture here of a gal who pursued a guy or how drunk is too drunk (In fact, not all campus rape/sexual assault is alcohol related. Not all girls go looking for “it.”) Or they say, omg, what if the colleges get it wrong? And all the stories about this college or that, some kid who got expelled or suspended…and we know little of those cases, those details.
But just look at this simply. You would want your girl to get the help she needed, right? And for the college to do something.
Ideally, the accuser also goes to local law authorities, lets them take on their part, as well. But she’s still part of the college, on a daily basis.
…
Hunt I think the property trespass examples confuse. Implied consent may not work here. Because it rests somewhat on her being able to rationally give that consent. I think the parallel is in gifts: if your impaired friend says take this piece of jewelry, one should consider her condition before resting on, “Well, she said it.” Same goes for implied: if she is impaired, you really shouldn’t take it, shouldn;t assume she’s making this decision rationally. She may have handed it to you or place it in your bag or whatever. You could wait to discuss it later, when she is more clearly rational.
“Marie, if you had been victim to this, would an apology be uppermost in your mind? I think it would be protection/feeling safe, getting any medical and emotional support, before an apology.”
No, it absolutely would not. But, I have read enough of these stories with the victim saying that is what she wanted to make me curious. To me, an apology is nothing. I really could not care less. And, the college counseling center is about the last place I would tell my own kid to go for help with a felony. But, again that’s just me. And, I still prefer 911.
Marie: It would be interesting to know where you are reading your stories. I was pretty surprised upthread you hadn’t heard of the Savannah Dietrich case. It was all over mainstream news. I am also still shocked by your victim advocates posts. This isn’t meant to be ugly, though it will inevitably come off that way. Where we read our stories may impact how we view the world.
Marie, if you’re relying on the media, they only provide some of the stories- as we know from the start of this thread, sometimes they get it wrong. Not enough to make generalizations.
And even if one calls 911, this isn’t like making a complaint and that’s that. Not like returnnig that ugly sweater and now it’s off your hands. Despite how some here think it’s the girl’s fault- drunk or mixed messages or etc- it can be quite traumatic to have endured, need to move forward from…and then still run into the accused.