Sure, Cardinal Fang, if you mean “we” in general, as opposed to meaning every individual poster.
It seems to me that the change that MADD and others brought about was to convert drunk driving from a social or psychological problem with unfortunate side effects, to a criminal act that is taken very seriously and prosecuted. That goes in the opposite direction from the public health issue treatment of sexual assault advocated by some. Perhaps there are qualifiers on which specific types of sexual assault the advocates for the public health approach think should be addressed in that way (just both participants definitely drunk?). Perhaps those could be stated, without an overestimate of the fraction of cases that fall into that category.
As mentioned, nothing wrong with the public health approach as one among others, but I don’t think one can or should treat clearly criminal action as a matter of public health.
Also, I like the suggestion made by Cardinal Fang in the last paragraph of #281, but it does still raise the question of how that is going to be determined in practice.
I don’t think it’s particularly difficult for the potential rapist to discover whether their potential victim is too drunk to say Yes or No. Do you? I think if someone was in front of me, and I wanted to figure out whether they were capable of making a decision and indicating what it was, I would not find that difficult. And if I did find it difficult, and I was contemplating having sex with that person, I wouldn’t.
Obviously afterwards it’s more difficult. But if, for example, evidence was presented that the alleged victim was unable to form a coherent sentence and appeared not to be aware of what was going on around her, that would be an indication that she couldn’t say No.
Also, it makes clear what the standard is, for dim or vicious people who think that it’s somehow OK to have sex with unconscious people. Was the Steubenville victim capable of saying No? No, of course not, she was lying there unconscious. Anyone who asserts she was capable of saying No is lying.
Exactly. Perhaps the paper linked upthread will inform some posters on what those “strong lessons” would actually entail when applied to sexual assault.
Assault is criminal so I think the lessons are fairly obvious. Assault is also defined by law. By concern are the issues that are not criminal and if decisions are made to have punitive measures how are those justly and fairly measured and dealt with. You can drive a car if you have had a drink or more as long as you don’t cross s very explicit line. I do not think college conduct codes are always clear in definition around non criminal activities and I don’t think they are always handled fairly and equitably. The erroneous belief that if a woman is drinking at all she has lost her agency…obviously that is a false assumption…that some unis have adopted in some cases. If they can’t get it right in a few cases why would anyone believe they get it right in all cases? If some unis had not so patently botched the whole mess none of us would even be discussing it.
Why would your son put himeself in such a precarious situation when there had been a false accusation of rape or assault against a young man your family knows, and other known instances of false accusations among your extended family and friends group?
I would have assumed the lesson from family discussions about those false accusations would be, when drinking in a bar with the idea one was open to some sort of sexual encounter, to avoid being too intoxicated to give consent or too intoxicated to know if a partner was capable of consent.
Assigning blame to your son for putting himself in a position to be assaulted is victim blaming on my part. I think the girl friend is the one in the wrong here. But I still can’t imagine how he ended up in this scenario after all your concerns with the possibility of women taking advantage of men. This just seems like the potential for your nighmare scenario to me: drinking, sexual activity, and mixed signals. The relationship doesn’t work out and there is a vengeful false accusation.
Funny. Because I know college kids drink. Because I know that women do indeed pursue men. And because I know that no parent has control over a 20 year adult and young people take risks. Because I am grateful she’s a very smart, strong, together woman and not a crazy one like his senior year high school stalker. Laughing Because I truly do get how vulnerable both young men and women are and how fraught the path toward a long long partner is with good and not so good and because of all of the above and above all I think the obligation sometimes is not to find blame but to find understanding and growth. And yes technically she violated an honor code and she knew it and technically she could have jammed by son seven ways from Sunday if she had wanted to and that is kind of the point for setting the punishment low and setting the proof bar high if you can’t tell who is telling the truth and the accusation doesn’t meet police investigative powers in conduct issues.
In #284, Cardinal Fang posted, “I don’t think it’s particularly difficult for the potential rapist to discover whether their potential victim is too drunk to say Yes or No. Do you? I think if someone was in front of me, and I wanted to figure out whether they were capable of making a decision and indicating what it was, I would not find that difficult. And if I did find it difficult, and I was contemplating having sex with that person, I wouldn’t.”
Before I comment further, I want to say that I think of Cardinal Fang as one of my heroes, based on the entire posting history on this topic.
But I have I problem with Cardinal Fang’s post #284. Perhaps/probably the “potential rapist” is able to discern whether the potential victim is too drunk to consent or not. However, the “potential rapist” may have had his judgment impaired by drinking himself. The real problem I see is that there are “potential rapists” who are capable of discerning that their partner is intoxicated beyond the capability of consent, and they proceed anyway. (In some cases of alleged activity at fraternity houses, that has been the whole point.) In any event, whether the situation has arisen deliberately or not, what do you think are the odds that the person would admit that he knew that his potential partner/victim was too intoxicated to consent, if he went ahead? I view those odds as low. Maybe the woman has someone watching out for her, who could testify subsequently. But maybe she doesn’t.
If only Cardinal Fang’s ethos, as expressed in the later parts of that paragraph, were more broadly adhered to!
There is one other remark that I have to make about whether it is clear that the victim is too intoxicated, or not: From what I have read and heard about blackout, a person in a blackout state may be acting as if he/she is not intoxicated, but he/she is not laying down any memories of events while in blackout. Now, admittedly, a lot of my information about blackout comes from a single NPR story, but in terms of that story, I don’t think people could have told that the woman was incapable of consent.
Why is he a “potential rapist” and she a "potential victim:? That kind of poisons the well right there. Why aren’t they both, as college students, “sexually available young adults” in this context?
I have not read the entire thread. Has anyone mentioned Ruth Coe of Spokane WA, mother of Kevin Coe? Kevin was the notorious South Hill Rapist. Ruth was apparently as nuts as her son. After the conviction she attempted to hire someone to kill the prosecutor.
Yes, yes and yes. to pretty stretch it…if every man is a potential rapist then every woman is a potential liar…I prefer to live life believing true rapists are far and few between and all women don’t lie and a whole lotta twenty somethings are very confused about relationships and sex.
Oh, I agree that rapists gonna rape. (And my sympathy for the rapist who claimed they were too drunk to know the other person was semiconscious? Where is the world’s tiniest violin when I need it?)
I’m aiming at people on the margin-- that fifteen year old who dimly has the idea that if the potential victim doesn’t say No it’s OK, but who is educable. If we set a simple understandable standard, people can apply it in the moment.
I have been calling some “accidental” rapists in my mind. To me they are those who want to do right, but haven’t been exposed to the right modeling and education. They make very very bad decisions, but don’t seem like they deliberately set out to rape someone to me.
But intent doesn’t matter and they are rapists. They have hurt someone else. They have hurt themselves.
Everyone should understand those university definitions.
@MomofJandL and @momofthreeboys, the reason @alh is laughing at you is because I’m a woman and straight. Message #291 is hilariously wrong. If I were contemplating having sex with someone, that person would be a man.
I have only ever known one person, a sometime college roommate, who was capable of “blackout intoxication” without actually passing out. That person was, it turned out, an alcoholic (and also, as it happened, a sex offender, although it was many years later that anyone knew about that kind of behavior), so there were lots of opportunities to witness that capability. He went so far as to steal cars and drive them meaningful distances without any real memory of it, on at least two or three occasions. The way I knew about the blackouts, other than just him talking about them, was that he was legally blind, and often lost his glasses in the course of a drunken spree. Generally, his friends and he learned that the best way to find his glasses was to interrogate him about the evening, and the glasses were almost always to be found very near the place of which he had his last coherent, detailed memory. Thus, if you knew him, and you saw him without his glasses, you pretty much knew he was blackout drunk. But he would be full of energy (and sometimes rage), and very talky and outgoing, if a little spastic in his movements.