My issue is how consent was given in the first place. Awful people who are horrible think that consent to sex is given by standing next to someone, or wearing a skirt, or going into someone’s room, or going into someone’s room while drunk, or having had sex with them previously, or going to sleep, or kissing, but normal non-awful people who are not horrible do not believe those things. If a woman never gave consent, the issue of her withdrawing it does not arise.
I interpreted her comments, as reported, to question the very idea that being too intoxicated to give consent is actually sexual assault. That is a definition from the college. It just makes me angry when I read, “in my generation…” because in our generation acquaintance rape wasn’t recognized as rape. She is correct:* “It was considered, ‘I was stupid and I got embarrassed.’”* The culture has changed from those days.
I would think her experiences would make her anxious to advocate for education, since it might have helped her son.
Of course I don’t know if the writer of this piece is selectively quoting the mothers to present a particular point of view.
Consent is withdrawn in the moment. The other person just doesn’t always respect the withdrawal of consent and continues, sometimes forcibly. Six months later the individual withdrawing consent reports. The individual withdrawing consent is not obligated to report immediately, as far as I know. Maybe they have been in counseling as you, momofthreeboys, are always recommending and the counselor and victim don’t decide until six months have passed that reporting is the appropriate action.
If someone doesn’t hear or honestly understand consent has been withdrawn, that becomes one of those he-said, she-said cases, imho. Again, there are valid reasons an individual might wait six months to report.
And, still thinking about Judith, in our generation a woman might consent to kissing in a car on a deserted road. The man might interpret her willingness to kiss in a car on a deserted road as consent to sex, if not an invitation. She might say “no” but still be raped. Society at the time might have said she was just stupid and should have known better. We have moved beyond those ideas. I hope.
I agree with @jonri that totalitarian regimes may successfully regulate the behavior of citizens by erring on the side of punishing everything and everyone without constraints. I don’t view that as particularly informative about solutions that can work in our democracy.
If you disagree with my statement that we can’t arrest and punish our way out of this problem, I’m interested to hear your plan for how we CAN do it, taking into account the Bill of Rights. There are about 18,000 separate police jurisdictions in this country. Many of those jurisdictions have vanishingly low rates of murder and burglary. Is there ONE that’s arrested and punished rape away?
I agree with you. I am not sure we ever arrest and punish our way out of any criminal behaviors at all. We protect society by removing dangerous individuals. It may also serve as deterrence. It may help victims with closure. I guess Title IX tribunals serve the same purpose.
I think education and efforts to change culture are much more likely to be effective in stopping any and all crime. As a society, we tend to treat people as though they will only behave because of fear of punishment. That is how many of us raise our children. I don’t find it a very successful approach myself for children or adults. But that is just the reality of the world in which we live as far as I can tell.
As a mom to three sons, I taught them early and often than no matter what, no means no. Every time anywhere always.
And how many police jurisdictions have educated and culture-changed rape away? None, right? If the existence of rape argues against punishing rapists, it also argues equally against educating to prevent rape.
While we wait for education and culture change to get rid of rape, we still have the problem of how to identify people who commit sexual assaults and at the very least prevent them from assaulting again. We can’t wave our hands airily and let colleges wait around for the happy day when rape has disappeared.
A reference was made upthread about how advocates could take a “strong lesson” from MADD and the progress they made with addressing drunk driving. I read the paper published last year in The American Journal of Public Health that addressed the cultural changes that MADD helped to achieve relative to drunk driving and how similar changes might apply to campus sexual assault. In short drunk driving activists were able to successfully shift the focus of sympathy from drunk drivers to the victims of their actions:
The paper then explores the prevailing public sentiments currently surrounding campus sexual assault that need to change to achieve comparable results. Here are just a few:
- Attributing campus sexual assault to miscommunication
- alcohol "blurs the lines" and complicates assignment for blame
- Tendency to excuse perpetrator's behavior
- Blame the victim --wore a short dress or drank too much
The paper addresses the issue in much more detail but the charts in Tables 1 and 2 provide a very good summary. While I don’t agree with everything in the paper I do think it suggests that we are at least on the right track with the activism demanding change on campuses today.
I just had a lengthy conversation with my S’s GF. (An ardent feminist.) We talked about sexual assault, and about young men raised by feminist mothers, some of whom are NOT proofed against it.
She said to me, I don’t know what you did, but don’t worry. Your son is NOT a man who would assault or interact with a woman in a way that is disrespectful.
I was deeply relieved.
Most men, regardless of being raised by ardent feminist mothers or not, are not sexually assaulting and raping women.
I hope I don’t have to now have a discussion with either of my son’s long term girlfriends to make sure I am relieved to know they are not assaulting them .
Nice Consolation. My S3’s long-term girlfriend told me this summer that technically she assaulted my son by current campus rules because she picked him up when he was drinking and she was fully aware of what she was doing but the outcome was positive and that was how they met. Obviously she had zero idea how ironic I would find that statement so I had a very long private chuckle. I’ve never heard anything but positive comments about my sons from any women their age and I only have one in a uni setting (the one with the GF who picked him up and assaulted him when he was drinking).
The only difference is the MADD campaigns began with the state level of intoxication that constituted drunk driving. As I’ve said repeatedly our states do have laws that define what constitutes harassment and sexual assault but often what happens on campus does not meet those definitions or is impossible to prove. I think we have to be specific with whatever comes next. Unfortunately it’s not yes means yes, because that does not remove the accusations that do not meet the legal definition. That said, I do believe the MADD model is an excellent starting point if we enact legislation that clarifies how colleges should handle the non-criminal accusations. I haven’t thought it completely through, but it would be interesting to take it a step further and ponder what happens to a person who has been drinking, is driving a car, but doesn’t meet the legal definition of “drunk driving” and hits someone else’s car or hits a bike rider or pedestrian. I did find this although it only addresses damages, but I need to get to sleep so can’t fully think it through…but it’s interesting to think about. Unfortunately it deals primarily with damages and I don’t now how to equate “damages” with what accusers might “want” from someone they accused of something that isn’t criminal or can’t be proved. My guess is the answer is “never to see them again” and unfortunately that is often not possible because the accused has rights also.
Since part of the success of MADD was punitive for driving drunk, there would need to be a verifiable “bar” to add punitive to college tribunals that are adjudicating on issues that may not meet that state’s criminal bar. I simply don’t see progress on the campus front without mandatory reporting or well established, understandable and provable actions which is the weakness of yes means yes a well as the weakness of “no means no”, although clearly “no” is more easily teachable.
Every college code of conduct that I have read is quite specific about the definition of sexual assault, harassment and consent. And most of them have a clear delineation between sexual assault and less serious actions. Those are the definitions that will control when a college panel adjudicates a complaint. Although I have not done the comparison, I would not be surprised if many of those codes mirror the state definitions.
If you are confused about what those definitions are the solution is quite simple – you can read them like anyone else.
If only it were “quite simple.” This discussion will continue to go round and round.
@sevmom --the definitions are clear as to what general behavior they include in each category. This constant claim about confusion surrounding definitions or that there are no definitions of harassment, assault and consent is usually made by posters who have not bothered to pick up conduct codes and read them.
I can’t speak for anyone else but when I read the definitions they are not unclear to me. When I reviewed them with both my children for their respective schools they were not unclear to them either.
At what specific BAC, does someone become incapacitated? At what specific BAC, does someone become substantially impaired? I think if you posed this question to 20 random college students, I bet you would get 20 different answers, some which weren’t even in the same ballpark. With DUIs, you have a relatively clean delineation of 0.08 explicitly in the law.
@roethlisberger the codes do not address BAC. Who is going to measure it? For most of the codes I have read the person has to be in a state to give you clear and unambiguous consent. Did you know -or reasonably should have known- they were too incapacitated to give that consent. I understand what that means and so did both my children.
But that is not the definition that most posters take issue with. The claim is that the definition of sexual assault has been expanded to include minor behaviors. The codes that I have read do a pretty good job of delineating the various levels of sexual misconduct.
momofthreeboys, If the sexual harassment & assault rules follow the MADD strategy, you’re not going to like the results. The point is, .08 BAC is not that drunk, as evidenced by the fact that very very drunk people sometimes turn up with double or even triple that level. MADD intentionally pushed for a strict level, because it is easy to determine, and very few people who are incapacitated to drive would have less than that level. The MADD rule was, intentionally, criminalizing driving that many people were doing. A BAC of .08 errs on the side of prohibiting driving.
You don’t want the strict rules that the MADD strategy would result in, if applied to sexual assault. Every time a college tries to do something like MADD did, every time a college tries to make a strict line, for example saying “We’re going to prohibit sex with a very drunk person even if they seem to consent,” you object.
You don’t want a MADD strategy. I haven’t seen you want to advocate any specific policy with respect to consent, or any rule about when someone is too impaired to give it. What is the line YOU would draw?
roethlisburger’s questions about incapacitation and substantial impairment bering me back to the idea of setting up Mech’s Place, after I retire. As previously advertised, the swizzle sticks will all be coated with a roofie-detecting substance. If someone’s drink has been tampered with, a portcullis will drop and no one will be able to leave until the tamperer has been identified.
One of the problems raised by roethlisburger’s question is that while the police can require a BAC test, one’s romantic partner generally cannot. (As I understand the law in my state, a person can refuse to take the BAC test, but at the cost of losing his/her driver’s license.). It doesn’t really help to know the BAC level that corresponds to incapacitation or substantial impairment, if one doesn’t know one’s partner’s BAC.
So, Mech’s Place to the rescue: I am adding breathalyzers! People can get a dated, notarized, time-stamped statement showing their own BAC and their partner’s, just before they leave!
As anyone who has been reading my posts for long knows, I am quite serious about this overall issue, and I don’t think it’s a laughing matter. However, some of the objections strike me as incompletely thought out.
(Also, yes, I am aware that no one would actually come to Mech’s Place, if I did set it up.)
Let me add, in case anyone is going to suggest estimating the BAC on the basis of the number of drinks and the (guessed) weight of the partner: I would not suggest that anyone I cared about should try to do that. I don’t think it’s sufficiently reliable.
QuantMech, as you point out, it’s completely impractical to determine the BAC of someone, either prospectively to avoid raping, or retrospectively to determine if a rape has occurred. Therefore a BAC level is ridiculous as a criterion for whether someone is too drunk to consent to sex.
Nevertheless, most of us agree that there is such a thing as too drunk to consent to sex. Nobody here is defending that Kennedy rapist, and nobody’s defending Brock Turner. Therefore we all agree there’s a line and we agree that BAC is not the way to determine where the line is. We’re merely arguing about where the line is, and how to determine if someone crossed it.
My intuitive notion, though it’s hard to formalize, is “If they can’t say No, they can’t say Yes.” If someone is in a state where they are unable to indicate refusal, then they can’t consent.