The Myths About Women Who "Cry Rape"

HRH but the "wouldn't have done it if I were sober" means that consent wasn't genuinely given, even if the word "yes" was used IMO.

The sort of situation you describe is unlikely to happen in healthy long-term relationships, where there is a whole load of context and you know each other well enough to know if someone's behaviour is being affected by alcohol.

If you don't know the person that well then you should not be having sex with them if they have been drinking. Would you get in a car with someone you'd seen having a drink in a nightclub without establishing exactly how many they'd had to find out if they were fit to drive? The same should apply to someone whose body you are going to penetrate. And if the answer is "more than two" then you should assume that consent is not concrete and sex is best avoided. Any hint of consent being changeable should result in an automatic decision not to go ahead.

HRH I see what you're saying but I think you're got yourself stuck into defending a position that doesn't really exist.

I'm reading your hypothetical situation as saying this: what if two people have slightly drunken but definitely consensual sex and then the next day the woman decides she didn't give consent even though she very clearly did at the time.

Have I got that right?

See, I think that kind of situation, where there is a 'retraction' of consent is rare.

In your hypothetical situation, where two people have mutually consensual but slightly drunken sex it would be unusual for her to change her mind the following day. Why would she? If she freely gave her consent at the time she'd presumably be as happy as he is in the morning. I think this goes on a lot and most people do not regret it.

If she changes her mind because her perception in the morning is so significantly different from the night before, then obviously she was somewhat more than slightly drunk. Therefore, she was vulnerable and incapable of giving genuine consent. You can only conclude that her partner has taken advantage (i.e. raped her).

If she changes her mind because of fear of consequences (i.e. makes a false allegation), well it happens but we've already established that it is incredibly rare.

I agree with you that two people can have slightly drunken sex without there being rape involved. I think in cases where a woman 'changes her mind' subsequently though, you will nearly always find that she probably wasn't just slightly drunk and that she was coerced or forced (i.e. raped).

Which bit?

"Well I have to say, I have no idea what you are referring to either"

I'm referring to the well-known truth that most rape victims never tell anyone about their rape, unless it's an anonymous rape counsellor or market researcher. However close people think their friendships and relationships are, they should never assume that they can categorically guarantee that their daughter/ mother/ sister/ wife/ best friend has not been raped - because the likelihood is that if she has, she will not have told you, or anyone else about it.

And of course, that's why women don't report it - becuse they themselves think "that's not rape". They blame themselves - "if I hadn't been a bit drunk" "if I'd been clearer that I didn't want that" "he didn't realise I wasn't up for it, I didn't make myself clear".... rape victims go through a plethora of minimising, long before anyone else minimises it for them. And so by the time they tell someone else, who usually backs up their minimisation, they have convinced themselves that it wasn't rape and it was just a bad sexual experience that should be shrugged off.

That is the most common result of most rapes. Women blaming themselves and shrugging it off. We don't need to tell our daughters to do that, every other fucker out there is already telling them to. It's not our job as mothers to groom our daughters to invalidate their own feelings about their own experiences (let's hope they won't have that experience, but 1 in 4 of them will. )

But that is the rpoblem HRH - masses and masses of rape cases, are those where the woman has not been "actively participating" but because she hasn't outright said "NO!" everyone says "that's not rape".

HRH I've no idea what you're talking about.

I'm inventing your children for the sake of argument, of course I have no idea what they're like. I don't know about what you're talking about vis a child telling someone a different story from everyone else, now you mention it, it rings a vague bell but it's not something I was thinkng of when I posted and my only recollection of it is you mentioning it somewhere else, but I promise you I wasn't referring to it because I had forgotten all about it until you mentioned it just now. You're projecting stuff into my posts that isn't there. I also don't assume your DS is gay either btw, I'm asking you to imagine how you would feel if he were and that happened to him (but I don't know, maybe he is, seriously, i don't remember anything you've ever said about your DC's, you attribute far too much to my memory).

Also how would you define forcibly penetrate in the situation of your for the sake of argument gay son?

Force doesn't have to involve violence. It can simply be a sustained refusal to pick up negative signals from someone who can simply not believe that this is happening to them and doesn't really believe, right up to the moment of penetration, that this is really going to happen.

Would you tell your DS in that situation that he's equally culpable?

Hmmm... but there's the problem... both parties "appear" to be consenting.

Seeing as how there are no witnesses, who decides if both parties appear to be consenting?

The rapist has a vested interest in lying and pretending that the other party appeared to be consenting. The rape victim has no motive to lie about it, unless s/he has some kind of "ishoos" which lead him/ her to falsely allege rape. And most people don't have such serious ishoos....

And you know what, if your daughter came home having been raped while drinking, I bet your theoretical position of her being equally responsible for what happened to her, would fly out the window.

Because if it didn't, it would be the most enormous betrayal of her and a horrifying thing to do to a rape victim. But having heard your opinion of that sort of situation, the likelihood is, that she would blame herself and never tell you and you would never know.