College Women: Stop Getting Drunk

But this isn't about the law is it, it's about acceptable behaviour. Most rapes do not make it as far as law because they happen within an accepted parameter of behaviour - rape and sexual assault are just about socially accepted in most instances. It's only when there's extra violence that most people get upset about them. When there isn't, a lot of people don't even recognise that they are rapes.

It would probably not be considered in the public interest to prosecute this particular woman in this particular case, because no-one's upset about it and therefore there's no case to answer. But it is certainly in the public interest, that people be educated that this sort of behaviour is generally not acceptable. It might be trifling as far as the law is concerned. It isn't trifling as far as behaviour is concerned. The more people understand that in general, respecting people's boundaries unless they've given you specific permission not to, is the default mode, the better.

Basil

That woman in your story Beatrix, prob doesn't think there's anything wrong with her behaviour. Probably no-one's ever told her there is

Cant speak for the kind of upbringing she had. She seemed perfectly normal. I have met her and laughed together - in his company about the story - she didn't deny any aspect of it - it was all part of the 'mating game' it seems. It certainly didn't occur to her that she might cause any upset - and she was quite right. Interestingly, she herself was an Malaysian national and come to the UK as a student. I really don't want to say any more about her than that for fear I might start to identify her or embarrass others. The point is that she wasn't from a sink estate in some decaying inner city.

There is a an old legal saying that - that the law doesn't concern itself with trifles. Puts me in mind of two old judges ignoring puddings put on their plates - another way of putting it - 'the eagle does not catch flies'.

There should be a campaign, aimed at all young people, telling them "drinking too much is strongly associated with you making a bad judgement and committing a sexual assault, so don't drink too much". That is certainly the message I am drumming into my sons.

Plus the message that I expect them to look out for their friends who may have drunk too much. I have also asked them what they would do if they saw a man attempting sex with an unconscious or incapable-through-alcohol girl - their answer - they would intervene, and if they felt unable to intervene, they would call the police or call dh or me. I have told them that if they are looking out for the safety of a drunken friend, and that means calling me from somewhere they know they shouldn't be, they get a pass on that, because I would rather they felt able to ring me if they needed help for someone.

There are some very complicated scenarios around consent and who's more incapable than whom and all that stuff. But the fundamental point it always comes back to is telling women not to do stuff. Where's the "Men, drinking too much is strongly associated with you making a bad judgement and committing a sexual assault, so don't drink too much" campaign? Precisely nowhere, because this is, again, for women to worry about and for men to carry on as previously.

I'm totally fed up with the don't drink, lean in, lean out, shake it all about woman hokey cokey we're being told to do all the time.

FWIW I have a son and a daughter and I'll damn sure be telling them both not to do anything without consent and not to drink themselves into a state of oblivion just because it's not cool and I won't clear up the sick - not because if they do they'll be contributors to a rape.

TBH I don't think you ever need to worry about it - I just can't see a time when a man will ever automatically assumed guilty of rape. On the contrary, I think often, women are automatically assumed to be lying about rape that has happened to them.

I think there is a lot of non-consensual sex around. And that we have to get better at educating our children to know that they must always always always ensure that whatever they do to someone, is with that person's consent. But at the moment, I think that uncompromising message of no sex unless consent is absolutely unambiguously there, is quite rare. People make too many excuses for non-consensual behaviour. That woman in your story Beatrix, prob doesn't think there's anything wrong with her behaviour. Probably no-one's ever told her there is.

but i do worry that any young man is going to be automatically assumed to be guilty of rape, if an accusation is made, even if he is as drunk as the victim was

I don't think you ever have to worry that a man is ever going to be automatically assumed guilty, but I see what you mean and realise you've already said you were leaving it.

I think intoxicated women sexually assaulting intoxicated men is quite prevalent (and visa versa) its just that for men its not a problem - anything but - if my male friends are anything to go by. They mostly all seem to have stories of such events.

One of them tells a tale of him being at a party years ago, where he'd been chatting and flirting with a woman there. Towards the end of the night, he bedded down and fell asleep on the ground floor. The women was sleeping in one of the bed upstairs. Sometime during the night, he was woken by her - she had straddled on top of him and put one of nipples into his mouth. She had to wake him up - with some urgency - as he was biting down hard on the nipple. Once he recovered his senses, he had to persuade the women to go back upstairs as there were others in the room who were also sleeping.

So - the actual elements of sexual assault by penetration were made out, as at no point prior to the physical act, had she made any attempt to obtain his consent.

After that they had a relationship together for about half a year. The last he had heard of her - she was a nurse - not something she could have been after being on the sexual offenders register.

He didn't regard it as a problem - so that's the point with men. If he had, he says, he'd have struggled to report it to the police - that a large breasted woman had put one of her nipples into his mouth without his consent. They'd have shown him the door.

With regards to the issue of women waking up after drunk sex, regretting it, and then "crying" rape. I don't believe such a thing exists.

Hmmm, and what is your point exactly? Do we all need to start listing the things we do or do not 'believe in'? Would it help the discussion?

Basil - i am not trying to say that there is a big problem of drunken young men being sexually assaulted or of young women making false rape accusations - but i do worry that any young man is going to be automatically assumed to be guilty of rape, if an accusation is made, even if he is as drunk as the victim was.

However, what Lurcio said about the research done in America - showing that the mindset of the man who commits date rape on a drunken woman is the that of a deliberate predator - that makes me see that, as she said, the situation I postulated is a distraction from the real,issues, so I shall leave it.

Going back to my first point - I think it is stupid for anyone to get incapably drunk. What possible up-side is there to drinking until you cannot control yourself, have no inhibitions, sense or ability to perceive danger, and until you are vomiting everywhere and maybe losing control of your bodily functions? I cannot see how it could possibly be enjoyable or fun, and it leaves you prey to many risks and dangers - so why do it?

Maybe I am a prig or a killjoy - but I have never been that drunk, not even once. In fact I have never had a serious hangover - the occasional slight headache the next day, nothing more - and i have still had plenty of fun, so I genuinely cannot see the point.

So how prevalent do you think the problem is of young men going out and getting drunk and being sexually assaulted by drunken young women STDG?

Do you think we need to worry about it as much as we worry about them being falsely accused of rape?

There is also the question of whether, in our society, women can ever truly consent to sex with a man. Some feminists don't think it is possible. But I guess that is a whole other discussion.

Basil - I deliberately didn't attribute a gender to either party, when i raised the question about two drunken parties having sex and one raising an accusation of rape against the other.

Rape is not sex that you regret, rape is sex that you do not consent to.
It doesn't matter how drunk you are you don't have sex with someone who does not what to have sex with you. It's that simple! Just only have sex with people that want sex with you.

TBH Phaserstostun, I've had loads of drunk sex i wouldn't have consented to had I been sober.

That never stopped me recognising that drunk or not, I had still consented, as consent is defined by our law and our societal mores. Because I'm not a loon. Neither are most women, but the rape myth that says women habitually accuse men of rape when they've had sex they regret, rests on that assumption.

"If both parties are too drunk to consent, and one party wakes up in the morning and believes it was rape (because they were too drunk to consent), then the other party is in the shit -"

No, they're not in the shit.

85-90% of rape victims don't report.

Of those who do, only 10% get to court because the CPS judge that there is not enough evidence to get a 50% probability of a conviction. In a situation such as the one you describe, there's only a 10-15% chance of being called in to the police and after the interview, such a case would almost certainly be categorised into the 90% of cases which never make it to court. And then they can walk out of the police station and tell everyone that she made a false allegation against them because that's what women do, innit? And everyone will feel sorry for them and be horrified by how victimised they've been.

Really, they're so not in the shit.

Even if women believe they were raped, they know that the rape law has been set up to enable men to get away with rape, so they don't bother to report in 85-90% of cases. 85-90%. It bears repeating, because it's an incredible figure and it's being ignored in favour of the rape myth that women wake up and go down the cop shop when they've had bad sex. Most women are reasonable, sensible people who assume that the man was also too drunk to know what he was doing and they write it off as a bad experience.

Behind all these questions is the hysterical assumption that women, the weaker vessel, are just waiting to accuse innocent men of rape.

They're not. You're worrying unduly.

The vast, vast majority of rapists get away with it. It's OK. Rapists aren't going to be held accountable for their actions any time soon.

I agree with Lurcio. What I think we are getting hung up on is this area of consent whilst drunk. I don't know if it has been said on here, but sometimes there is an implication that drunk people cannot consent (to sex), because they are not fully in charge of their faculties. If I consent whilst pissed, is that a valid consent? Maybe it's a minor point, I dunno.

I think we may be in danger of going down the blind alley that so many rape apologists would like us to (and I am not accusing people on this thread of being rape apologists, just saying that this particular piece of propaganda is so prevalent that we're in danger of losing sight of the wood for the trees). SDTG's example is an academically interesting one, but an incredibly rare case. There's an American social scientist (will post links this evening, just grabbing a moment in my lunch break to post) who's done a lot of work on rape on American campuses - and the scary thing about his work is that the mindset of the man who perpetrates date rape on a drunken woman at a frat party is for the most part exactly the same as that of the classic stranger-down-the-alley rapist - he's generally planned the assault and is a serial offender, knows exactly what he's doing (no crossed wires about "but I thought she wanted it/she didn't say no") and doesn't care. This is the form the majority of rapes take while the woman (or sometimes the man) is drunk. By constructing a hypothetical "what if they were both equally drunk and both too drunk to read the other one's signals" example, we're losing track of the form that most real cases take.

I do think consent works both ways actually it would be a sexualsssault if the guy was the one barely holding his head up while the girl was on top. So telling people not to get so drunk they can tell if the other person has consented just makes sense

Consent means enthusiastically having sex... If you are actively penetrating someone, is say you've shown consent. If she is trashed but enjoying and actively participating id say that was consent.

If he is trashed and penetrating her while she lays there, room spinning looking like she's going to vomit and not saying anything at all...or passed out Not consent.

Id never have lost my virginity if not for drunk sex, I had way too many issues. But I was never going to cry rape, no matter how embarrassed I was. I don't think most women would, do you?

Cross-posted with Basil - my question is, if both parties are equally drunk and equally incapable of consent, are they both rapists or are they both victims?

But what if he hasn't raped someone? What if he too was too drunk to give informed consent, or to judge whether the woman was sober enough to consent?

If both parties are too drunk to consent, and one party wakes up in the morning and believes it was rape (because they were too drunk to consent), then the other party is in the shit - even though they were equally drunk and incapable of properly assessing whether consent had been given.

If they are both as drunk as each other, the person who has not got consent to what they are doing, is doing the raping/ assaulting.

Not difficult.

You don't end up putting the blame on men STDG - you put the blame on the person who is doing something to someone else's body without their informed consent.

In most cases, that will be men doing that to women; in some cases it will be men doing it to men; in far fewer cases it will be women doing it to men or women doing it to women.

I always start to find it quite funny how horrified people are by the idea that the presumption should always be that you don't do anything to anyone else's body, unless you have got their informed consent.

I think I love BasilBabyEater.

And I can't believe how many people on this thread can't tell the difference between waking up the next morning thinking "god I had my beer goggles on, and the sex was a bit shit" and realising you've been raped.

My DS is only 5, and he already knows the mantra "it's only a game if everyone wants to play and everyone's smiling." Hopefully, as he gets older that can form the foundations of a discussion about enthusiastic participation (not just consent - as someone memorably said on another thread, that's setting the bar way too low).

And StarBallBunny - re. putting all the blame on the man instead - if he's raped someone, this is precisely where all the blame should go.

Thanks claraschu you put it much better than me.

My problem with all this is that in our attempt to, quite rightly, stop victim blaming and putting all the onus on the woman, we end up putting all the blame on the man instead.

That is not equality.