The fact that some of you seem to believe that 1)there are men who think it is ok to have sex with someone who is unconscious and 2)that these same men will be swayed by watching a video like this is simply mind boggling.
I also find it interesting that for all the condescension and mastubatory humor, the video doesn’t explain what you are supposed to do when 1)someone says they want tea but they really don’t and are just saying so because they think they like you, but then decide some time later that you are really a jerk and therefore you should not have given them tea and are a rapist or 2)that the person had a couple drinks at a party, walks back to your place, puts the kettle on the stove, takes out the cups and drinks the tea but then a week later says “Sorry, I was in a black out state and didn’t really want the tea, you are a rapist.”
@Hanna, reading her letter, frankly she sounds like an unstable person who is possibly making all or part of this up to garner attention.
Which may or may not be true, of course, but even if she is telling the truth she is a person who goes to a professional conference and gets drunk enough to be “taken advantage of”–whatever that means. And again, if she is telling the truth, he is a person who, despite everything that has been said about consent when a person has been drinking, goes ahead and does something with a person who has been drinking.
The blind leading the blind? Who are the adults?
I too wonder whether her cases will be examined if the charges are unsubstantiated.
You’re right. It doesn’t make an accusation easier to prove. Nor does it make an accusation harder to prove. That’s not the point-- the point is the default is “Not with you,” and overriding the default requires an affirmative consent. We’re not talking about method of proof here. We’re talking about how people ought to behave. People ought not to assume that someone consents to their overtures up until the person tells them to stop. We ought to assume that people don’t want to have sex with us-- because the enormous majority of people don’t-- and require that supposition to be explicitly overruled.
In point of fact, it was #3 in the queue after the original when I found it on YouTube. A parody, of course, but it’s not as though the world missed the point.
I agree with @Consolation about the NYU woman. In her letter, she does not come across as a stable adult. It was more than a little chilling to think that she would be the person responsible for adjudicating cases at a university. Not that it wasn’t also chilling to think the guy who hit on her had the same job at another major university.
Most people would say that I am definitely not someone who suffers fools gladly, but I did not really see anything in her letter (the one to all members of the association) that would cause me to think she wasn’t stable. Yes, the last paragraph was a bit overwrought and not what I would typically advise someone in a leadership role to write, but if she was in fact assaulted then I don’t see how anyone could hold her letter against her.
As to whether or not she should be adjudicating cases … my guess is that NYU would be sued six ways from Sunday if they tried to remove her from her role. But off the record, I do wonder if someone who has been recently sexually assaulted can maintain the level of objectivity required to judge these type of cases (though I’m not sure if that’s her role at NYU). Maybe she should voluntarily recuse herself from this part of her job.
“We ought to assume that people don’t want to have sex with us-- because the enormous majority of people don’t”
I think we can agree that the subset of people who are making out with us alone in a room are a whole lot more likely than average to want to have sex with us. We should still assume they don’t want to, but not because of what the enormous majority of people want.
Hanna, oddly enough, I lost more girlfriends because I backed off than because I pressed the issue too hard. This is a really tough area of human behavior to try to legislate. Unless there are witnesses to the behavior it will always be a she said-he said situation. People line up their opinions based on their own personal situations and lives are destroyed either way. Society gives such mixed messages. Movies like Shade of Grey are hugely popular among women, but depict acts that would land most men in jail.
Ultimately, I tell all of my kids to avoid intimate contact until they have established a serious, committed relationship. This is not only to keep them safe legally, but emotionally as well. Even then, you can never know until it is too late.
I don’t disagree. I was countering the idea supplied upthread that he should assume she is likely to want to have sex with him because young women nowadays on campus are sexually active.
I brought up the issue of the default standpoint, because I thought that women were safer when the default was “no.” There was also less burden on the woman to establish a lack of consent, because a lack of consent was thought to be the norm–maybe this was only my social circle, and a long time ago, but I think it was the case back then.
In the current era, I thought that the default suggested by Cardinal Fang, of “Probably, but not with you,” was amusing, but it does offer less protection to the woman.
I don’t agree with Hanna’s suggestion that we can all agree about what people who are making out in a room are likely to want. It is quite possible that the woman takes intercourse very seriously, and is actually no more likely to want to have sex with that person–at that time, prior to marriage–than with any random person on campus. It seems to me that if one cannot assume that the default is “No,” even in that scenario, then a woman who takes intercourse very seriously has little option other than a life of prudery until she is ready to commit. This does not seem right to me.
As I said, “We should still assume they don’t want to, but not because of what the enormous majority of people want.” I differ with the reasoning, not the result.
@much2learn “I agree up to that point, she does not seem to be incapacitated. However, she has also not given consent yet. I believe she would have to remain conscious enough to understand what she is participating in and give consent in some way through her words or active participation.”
@northwesty “…the sober person is legally allowed to proceed with the sex if under the circumstances it was reasonable to believe that the impaired drunk person actually gave consent. Reasonable belief of consent is a complete defense to the charge of rape (unless you are dealing with an underage statutory rape situation).”
For reasonable belief of consent to be a defense, the other person also has to have the capacity to consent.
Consent is an ongoing thing. It may be true that your partner gave consent at one point, but then became incapacitated. For example, if your partner passes out, I don't think you will win arguing that she gave consent before she passed out.
@northwesty “So it usually will be legally sufficient reasonably evidence of consent if it can be shown that the drunk person was walking, talking, flirting, texting, undressing, obtaining condoms, etc.”
Wow. I don’t even know where to start with this sentence. None of these things are evidence of consent for sex. Responsible women do all of these things without giving consent for sex.
DA: Why did you think she had consented?
Defendant: I saw her walk into a store, talk to the clerk, buy condoms, and send a text. I smiled at her and she smiled back. I also noticed that she had changed her clothes, and therefore must have also undressed recently. To me, that is like arguing that if she didn’t want to have sex, then why did she bring her vagina?
Coming back to the OP’s question. In my mind, your sentence would be the worst possible advice to give a student going off to college.
Oh, for Pete’s sake, you know perfectly well that the example does not suggest that these things are occurring between random strangers in a drug store. Be serious.
In fact, this series of behaviors is very similar to the actions of the young woman in the Occidental case.
Perhaps the difference in my view and Hanna’s is a different understanding of the word “default,” where Hanna probably has the correct understanding of it. But I think that if a parent is telling sons that the “enormous majority” of women who are making out with a man want to have intercourse with that man, let alone that the “enormous majority” of the women want to have intercourse with that man that evening, I think the parent is misleading the sons, in a way that could end badly for both the man and the woman–and would end badly for a relationship that might actually have worked out very well, if given longer to develop. Others’ experiences may differ, of course. And it is also possible that Hanna and I are applying the term “want” in different ways. It reminds me of my debating days, where my team always defined “should.” We never got around to defining “is,” though.
Yes, @Calicash we know that there are rapists who will rape anyone in an expression of power. I was probably reading about such studies before you were born.
Let me ask you a question: What percentage of college predators rape fat girls, homely girls, etc? Or do they go for girls who they regard as sexually attractive enough to be worthy of a notch on their bedpost? They see her, they want her, and they are going to take her whether or not she is compliant. Although I have little doubt that part of it is a power rush, it’s not just about power.
In no way does this mean that it is an any way the woman’s fault for attracting the attention of this sicko.
And I have no doubt that it is NOT true of the “two drunk kids” male who is labelled a rapist by some group of college administrators, such as the Occidental kid and others.
@Consolation I don’t know. I don’t have data on that, so I will not make assumptions. But if I did, for me, that desire to get a notch on their bedpost, speaks more to a desire to have a higher status and power rather than, “this girl is so attractive that I’m going to sleep with her no matter what.”
