Discussion with female friend re Ched

And in fact yes very true scallops.

The idea seems to be that it is better to let 100 rapists go free, or 1000 or whatever it is, rather than wrongly convict one man. (I have read that in quite a lot of places).

But then the idea seems to be that it is NOT better for 100 men go without sex with someone who may be too pissed to consent, or for 1000 men to go without that sex, if it means one woman isn't raped.

Hmmmmm.

Yes true scallops.

And for those men, they are very likely to be taking "drunk" to mean utterly wasted - as many people in our culture will do. In which case yes they are correct. They understand drunk to mean incapable of consent, and so yes if they then have sex with them then that is rape. Their understanding is correct and it is good that they have come to that way of thinking - which TBF is the way lots of men think anyway and quite probably these men always thought that as well. Whether they linked it with the law or not - clearly lots of men realise that it is wrong to fuck someone who is too slaughtered to know what is going on.

Sorry to go back a bit (and possibly back to the point of the thread) I've just caught up with this and the following statement stood out for me:

"There were guys who were convinced that it was indeed now rape to have sex with a 'drunk' woman. Misinformation is damaging and actually detracts from the issue of 'consent' that lies at the heart of the matter." What is damaging about saying that having sex with a drunken woman is rape? Who does it damage? What will actually happen if men take that at face value?

Smash, wonder if you can help with this, I've been wondering... If she'd gone with "i felt threatened, naked and alone with two men" rather than "i was so drunk, i was incapacitated", do you think it would have been a more or less straightforward case, in the eyes of people who are dubious about the line between tipsy and drunk?

X post!

I understand your point smash, and what seven means.

I'm quite confused how the thread got here though?

smashbox I'm not sure what your overall point is with this. We seem to keep going off on tangents. Looking upthread you came in to tell op she was talking shite and now we're talking about children and stuff.

This sort of comment "And a 10 year old lacks capacity to consent, and is protected absolutely in law, as are all children under the age of 13".

Well yes the written legislation says that but in real life, in actual everyday life, they are not protected at all, all too often. Same goes for women who are unconscious and men come along and fuck them anyway, and women who are told by courts that men could have reasonably have thought they had consent under the most ludicrous sets of circumstances.

Talking about the "letter of the law" is all well and good but the law is rarely upheld in matters of the sexual abuse of women and children. Society is made up of lots of people who believe rape myths and those people work across all occupations including police, social services, doctors, judges and get called for jury duty.

In fact and in real life if you are raped, whether you are 12, or unconscious, or just so pissed you can't stand up, you are unlikely to see the man who raped you brought to book.

There is a context around all of this and just looking at the words in the Sexual Offences Act doesn't illuminate on what is going on in the real world.

Absolutely, Yonic, but that's a judgement that would have to be made in a court, the man could say she said she wanted to, yes she was drunk but I didn't think she was that drunk, and then the woman would have to call witnesses as to her drunkeness - eg Miss who saw her colleague vomiting and wetting herself, and then the jury would have to decide how drunk she was. Assuming all the evidence was admitted.

I see what you mean that age is an absolute fact whereas capacity is a judgement.

That doesn't stop us concluding that Miss's colleague did not have capacity to consent and that no one close enough to her to be putting his penis into her would have the reasonable belief that she did.

Ffs autocorrect hopefully you are able to see what some of those words should have been

I don't rally understand this absolute offence stuff. Everything still has to go to court. The people in the city are drawn from society. Our society is frequently accepting of men who have seed with 12 year olds (see Rotherham etc and police social worker etc inaction).

It's not as simple as age was 12 you are a bad man off to prison for you.

It is, but i think sevens point is that you can try to defend yourself in both cases by claiming you thought you had consent/she was an appropriate age, regardless of how absolute the offence is.

Ah, I know what i mean

I just tried googling but couldn't find it. There were some threads on here at the time. I will have a search once I am on a proper machine rather than this device.

Yes, Seven, but in law, you have to PROVE that the unconscious person was unconscious and didn't consent to sex. Or was so drunk that they could not consent to sex. Whereas sex with a child under 13 is an absolute offence.

Seven - can you link to those cases because I'm not finding them on Westlaw or Lexis? Or advise me what search terms to use?

Well it's not really the same between the child and the drunk person in terms of situation but certainly in the law a person who in unconscious (to give the obvious example) and a child under 13 are both considered unable to consent to sex.

Smash box - in my opinion a blind drunk person is one who has drunk to the point where they no longer have the capacity to stand properly, control their bladder, speak properly, know where they are, know what is happening around them. I had a colleague who got what I consider to be blind drunk once: she urinated on herself in the toilets of a pub and was slumped on the floor unable to get up. She couldn't give her address or remember who she lived with, she kept telling me she was going to die. When I was making (probably a very unreasonable) comparison to a child being unable to consent I was thinking of my colleague and women who are that drunk because they have no capacity to consent to anything. If a man had taken my colleague off for sex and then said he believed he had consent I would have been very shocked, disgusted and angry etc.
My college was fine that night though as I managed to get her phone (which fortunately wasn't password protected) and I contacted her husband who collected her, but the thought of what could have happened if I had been as drunk as her is quite frightening.

FYI men have got off on rape charges of having sex with children under 13 on the basis that they "looked older" so that part of the law is not watertight by any means, the court hears the arguments and decides what they decide.

Smashbox if you have no experience of being drunk then it feels odd for you to be stating what it is like or not like. Maybe it would help you to think of it in terms of being on extremely strong pain relief in hospital so you are high as a kite and in and out of consciousness if that has happened to you. A person who is "blind drunk", in the way that most in our culture would understand it to mean, is not capable of consenting to anything, they have lost control of their motor skills to a large extent, and are unlikely to make any sense when you try to talk to them, or even be able to form words, stand, or successfully pick something up without a lot of difficulty.

Miss, the point of a jury is judgement by peers - everyone shows up with preconceptions!

Yonic - as I have already said, I don't drink alcohol, and am not around those who do, so I have no practical experience of what "blind drunk"means.

What I was saying was that there is no need for a jury to decide if a 10 year old consented in any circumstances as the law is clear that a 10 year old cannot consent in any circumstances.

Fair enough. I am happy to learn. I think it is a crock of shite though that in such a patriarchal society the issue of consent and capacity isn't more robust in order to protect women more from the defence of 'belief of consent'.
Like I said yesterday, I would be rubbish on a jury where consent and alcohol are the main issues in a rape trial as I would have too many pre conceived ideas.

Smash box, Miss said "blind drunk" - we are all using language a bit differently but I think it's true that a man or woman described as "blind drunk" would not have the capacity to consent.

Law:
The Sexual Offences Act 2003 (the Act) came into force on the 1st May 2004. The purpose of the Act was to strengthen and modernise the law on sexual offences, whilst improving preventative measures and the protection of individuals from sexual offenders. The Act extends the definition of rape to include the penetration by a penis of the vagina, anus or mouth of another person. The 2003 Act also updates the law about consent and belief in consent.

The word 'consent' in the context of the offence of rape is now defined in the Sexual Offences Act 2003. A person consents if she or he agrees by choice, and has the freedom and capacity to make that choice. The essence of this definition is the agreement by choice. The law does not require the victim to have physically resisted in order to prove a lack of consent. The question of whether the victim consented is a matter for the jury to decide, although the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) considers this issue very carefully throughout the life of a case.

As yonic said, a reasonable belief in consent is a defence in law.

And a 10 year old lacks capacity to consent, and is protected absolutely in law, as are all children under the age of 13 - there is no requirement to prove consent in the case of child under the age of 13.

So your argument re a drunk woman being like a 10 year old doesn't really hold water.

And it is for the jury to determine if that belief is reasonable, if that is the defence of the accused.

Miss, Sashh wasn't making a suggestion: a reasonable belief in consent is a defence in law to a charge of rape.