“@Muchtolearn, not trying to pick a fight, but I think statements like “all rapes are forcible” is part of the problem, and you see it running through all of these threads.”
I am very uncomfortable with people using “forcible rape” only for situations the the perpetrator is not known to the victim. The idea that rapes where the perpetrator is know to the victim are not forcible is just not true. I think it implies that this is all a bunch of women being hysterical about regret sex, which is not the case.
“Sorry, but two drunk nineteen year olds having sex is not rape.”
Many people think that when guys get a girl extremely drunk and incapacitated and then have sex with her that is “just drunk kids having sex.” However, I have learned that if you ask the same people what they think if their son had been drinking to the point of incapacitation and then half the football team has sex with him, they feel less like it is “just kids having sex.” For many people, where they stand depends on where they sit.
The argument that no one can know what happens when two people are alone is going to be tested in Texas soon. Texas is going to allow students with permits to concealed carry handguns on campuses statewide. I think it won’t be long until a guy tries to rape an women and she shoots him dead. Are the same people still take a “you can’t convict because you can’t know for sure what happened without a video” view? I will be fascinated to see how many people are consistent in their views.
@Hanna “… we should probably tell our sons and daughters that BDSM in the college context is extra risky, no matter how carefully they document consent.”
True, but I really don’t want to explain it to DD. I think this could be a valuable service that a college consultant could provide. lol
“And by the way, California is trying to make it illegal to record a consent negotiation. I think it is worth pondering why that is if this whole system was really about the inability to prove things.”
Can someone please explain to me why having recorded consent should be illegal? If the aim is to enforce “yes means yes” and the woman does indeed voluntarily provide recorded evidence of assent, isn’t that what everyone should want? especially if this recorded consent was provided at every step of the sexual encounter, to obviate charges of withdrawn consent?
Recording consent during the progression of a sexual encounter seems unnatural to me, nevertheless, it SHOULD placate those worried about campus rape and sexual assault. I can’t think of any reason that California legislators would wish to pass such a law, other than to give women “wiggle room,” after the fact. It appears that they wish to move the goal posts on their own “yes means yes” policy.
so women never go out to get drunk of their own volition? Or is it that women are not capable of making decisions for themselves, and guys need to be responsible for them?
surely you will concede that there is a slight difference between “two drunk kids having sex” and someone being incapacitated and then gang raped by “half the football team”
I assume that if someone gets arrested for killing someone else, the issue of self defense will be examined by a competent judge, tested by counsel for both the state and the accused, and then decided by as unbiased of a jury as possible, using rules and a process that has developed over centuries. But yeah, to be consistent I would assume that many of you will argue that the shooting shouldn’t be reported to the police because lots of murders go unsolved, and that a person who advocates for shooting victims should decide whether the shooting was justified.
@whatisyourquest California is one of a handful of states that requires the consent of all parties to the activity being recorded. I assume the argument is if you can’t or didn’t have the capacity to consent to the sexual activity, you couldn’t have consented to the recording. Personally I think it is a consequence of the vast expansion of the definition of incapacitation in the sexual assault policies
“1) so women never go out to get drunk of their own volition?”
Sure they can.
“Or is it that women are not capable of making decisions for themselves, and guys need to be responsible for them?”
Not saying that at all. If the woman is sober enough to know what she is doing and actively participate then I have no issue. If she is not, then I have a problem with it.
“2) surely you will concede that there is a slight difference between “two drunk kids having sex” and someone being incapacitated and then gang raped by “half the football team””
I am saying that in both situations, if you don’t have consent, you don’t have consent. Too many people want to wink about what consent means when a woman is incapacitated and argue it is “just drunk kids having sex”, but they don’t wink so much when it happens to an incapacitated man. That double standard needs to stop.
“I am very uncomfortable with people using “forcible rape” only for situations the the perpetrator is not known to the victim.”
Who said that? It’s forcible if you use physical force or the threat thereof. It’s not forcible if there’s no force or threat, just incapacitation. Knowing or not knowing the perpetrator has nothing to do it.
The definition of the term “forcible rape” was changed in 2012 and adopted by the DOJ and the FBI. As far as state statues are concerned, I don’t think the term is used at all anymore. Force is not required in order to prove sexual assault or rape in most jurisdictions.
Much2learn:how do define incapacitated beyond the obvious of a passed out woman? How does a man determine when a yes or enthusiastic physical engagement is not reliable due to incapacitation? Don’t two drunk kids hook up consensually every weekend on hundreds of college campuses every weekend? By some definitions lots of them would be incapacitated.
I don’t think anyone here or on any other thread had ever argued it is not rape to have sex with an incapacitated woman. The grey area is how to define incapacitation in the real scenario of a college party scene.
Any time multiple guys take turns with a woman it would be gang rape in my opinion.
"Many people think that when guys get a girl extremely drunk and incapacitated and then have sex with her that is “just drunk kids having sex.”
Getting someone else drunk? Do you mean forcibly pouring alcohol down someone’s throat? Because that is assault. Otherwise, women have agency. They can choose to stop drinking long before that point. College women are competent and intelligent people who are more than capable of making good decisions. Can they be overpowered by someone larger? Yes. But I don’t think that’s what you mean by getting a girl drunk. I don’t know if you believe that women are hothouse flowers who must be protected not only from men, but from their inability to make good decisions, and I hope you don’t send that message.
If someone can figure out who is at fault if two same sex people go out and party hearty and then have sex and one files a complaint we might get somewhere. Is the at fault person in this case the one who weighs more? The one who is physically taller and bigger? The one who was on top? Inquiring minds want to know.
But why is it assumed that a drunk guy didn’t want to have sex with some of his teammates and that a drunk woman did want to have sex with the guy she never looked twice at while sober? It is a slippery slope from a little drunk and less inhibited, to judgment impaired by beer goggles, to barely conscious. It seems that as a society we are more comfortable assuming that the drunk woman was capable of consent with the guy than we are thinking that a drunk guy was capable of consent with his teammates. I don’t know how to manage that line well as a college. But it is why I’m advising my son and daughter not to mix alcohol and sex. You shouldn’t drive drunk and you shouldn’t have sex drunk, at least not outside of a relationship. It just seems too dangerous for both concerned.
@momofthreeboys, how do you know that your friend’s sons were the victims of false allegations if you weren’t there in the room? That was my point in my earlier post. It is somebody’s sons who are the ones perpetrating the real sexual assaults that do occur all too frequently and I’m sure that those parents fully believe that their sons could never have done such a thing.
^^ because in the first case the women recanted…she claimed her mom was behind it and “encouraged” her to file the complaint plus she didn’t want her (then) boyfriend to think she had cheated so everything was dropped. The second is moving through the courts right now but cleared a few hurdles so I’m speculating at the outcome. It takes a few years to clear these things and a few years ago there were quite a few very weak legally sustainable decisions by colleges so I’m hopeful for my friend’s son.
What is incapacitated? Passed out? A certain blood alcohol level? Can you be incapacitated but still be able to converse? How do men & women judge whether their partner is incapacitated?
@pittsburghscribe the two situations are not remotely similar as I expect you know. If you are aware of some situation where a man had sex with one partner after drinking and then at some later point decided that he was in fact too drunk to consent, you might be able to draw the conclusion you wish. But I doubt you are persuading anybody with your “raped by fifty guys is exactly the same as drunk sex” argument.
And of course there is a “slippery slope” from “a little drunk” to “beer goggles”. That is why in the real world there are actual standards to determine when someone is too impaired to consent, and why the standard is how a reasonable person would interpret the actions of the alleged victim. Neither of those things are true in college tribunals by the way. Barely concious is way down the slope from where the actual issue is, again as I expect you understand.
What is that statement based upon? Here is Princeton’s “actual standard”:
[quote]
In the context of this policy, incapacitation is the state in which a person’s perception or judgment is so impaired that he or she lacks the cognitive capacity to make or act on conscious decisions. The use of drugs or alcohol can cause incapacitation. An individual who is incapacitated is unable to consent to a sexual activity. Engaging in sexual activity with an individual who is incapacitated (and therefore unable to consent), where a person knows or ought reasonably to have understood that the individual is incapacitated, constitutes sexual misconduct.
The change in the law in Texas is only a change for dorms and classrooms. You have always been able to carry a gun on campus- you just could not take it in the buildings. You still must be 21 to have a concealed weapon permit and very few 21 year olds live in the dorms in Austin. If there was a shooting that the University wanted to investigate under Title IX, whether it happened on or off campus would not matter, so implementation of Campus Carry is unlikely to up the ante in this conversation.
I guess the question (which is not new with Campus Carry) is whether the University would use a preponderance of evidence standard to expel a student for murder if the student was not prosecuted based on police and prosecutors determining there was not enough evidence to pursue criminal charges.
@harvestmoon1, I am talking about the concept of a “black out state” which I believe is defined as when a party appears to be able to consent but actually cannot. Not sure if Princeton defines a blackout state or not, but a number of the policies we all discussed a year or so ago do. If I recollect correctly, Amherst, Vandy, maybe UVA and Bucknell were all schools that had some type of black out state definition in their consent policies.
There is no mention of “blackout state” in your post @Ohio. The statement you made in your post #795 is flat out inaccurate. And in a thread with over 25K views that bothers me.
And let’s get real - “blackout state” would certainly be included in the definition of “incapacitated” and thus subject to the same standards of what a “reasonable person” would have understood.
And in case anyone thinks the “reasonable person” standard is specific only to Princeton, here is MIT’s “actual standard”:
