'If a woman is drunk a man should not be prosecuted for rape'

I agree with the prosecutor. And I say that as someone who has been a 'victim' of this.

StillLost I think Buffy was agreeing with you. She was saying how ludicrous those assumptions are.

But yep. The "All women lie" thing is just depressing. AAARGH. How do people get such toxic ideas into their heads? It just becomes so pervasive, often they don't even overtly know that they are working from that belief and it just forms an undertone for everything.

It's like if you think small children are always manipulative - you will interpret their actions differently. For example a child trying to explain will be interpreted as "cheeky" or "trying to have the last word".

If you assume all dogs are aggressive - you will be scared of dogs because you interpret any gesture as aggression - a friendly hello becomes a lunge, a gentle sniff becomes "it's going to bite me".

We do have to challenge these assumptions. Unfortunately the person the assumption is about can't be the one to challenge it. The only way, in fact, to challenge it is to purposefully act the opposite. Have more sex, and be open and proud about it. Be honest to a fault. (Suddenly I understand the sex positive movement...) Problem is, that interferes with our agency. And just talking about sex and telling the truth doesn't help if the person doesn't believe you anyway.

I was once involved in a discussion on another board where someone tried to claim on grounds of probability that if a woman had had more sex then her claim of stranger rape was less likely to be true (?!). Which was agreed by the majority and the comment was recommended by a depressing number of people, so you can get an idea of the sort of "logic" in play...

Until someone commented that a virgin would have more incentive and therefore be more likely to lie and make a false accusation. The men on that discussion tied themselves in knots and couldn't decide which type of woman was more unreliable. But basically it boiled down to a belief that all women lie, all women want to make it look like they've had less sex, and no woman can be trusted.

If you unpick those assumptions even a little bit, quite quickly you get to the idea that once women have had sex, their "no" is somehow less valid.

That is not what I'm saying at all. Quite the opposite. If you're relaxed about casual sex, the experience of waking up beside someone whose name you can't remember isn't a novel one why would you accuse a man of rape if it wasn't in fact on this occasion rape?

Possibly. I don't know. I suppose I find that easier to understand. Nobody likes to think they might have been coerced into something and didn't make a free choice so it's easier to be defensive. I find the defying of clear logic baffling, though. But then, I'm currently trying to find out if I have ADD and one of the things about ADD is apparently looking for all of the exceptions to every rule, including logic (which is probably the best description of my mind I have ever come across, as an aside) and somehow arriving at a more logical logic even though it's not as straightforward. Most things aren't straightforward. It seems obvious that they aren't. I don't know why people don't get this.

Sorry for my overuse of girl rather than woman there, BTW. Bad habit.

Bertie re the resistance to questioning "common knowledge" do you think it is similar to when people are resistant to accepting that they are in any way socialised into certain behaviours?

Oh I do love it when you start picking apart commonly accepted "logic" and realise it's total nonsense. It's one of my favourite things to do, DH thinks I am totally illogical, but it's astounding, really, to realise how many commonly accepted "facts" are just, basically, totally made up.

It is depressing though, because when you try to explain it to people they get irritatingly defensive about it, and then also, not everybody gets it so forevermore you're going "Well yeah but nobody really believes that, right, I mean it doesn't make any sense!" and forgetting that, in fact, most people still do believe this, most people don't question "common knowledge" and a lot of people don't like thinking even when this is pointed out to them or all of the thinking done and laid out in a nice logical way FOR them.

So, there is that.

It was ages ago now but about the post by the police officer who took a girl home because they felt she was too drunk to consent. There are basically two possible scenarios if they had left her be.

1. The guy was a genuinely nice man, and wanted to get the girl home safely himself, because perhaps he lived near her, or he was worried that in her state she might wander into a river. Or he believed some rape myths himself and was worried she might fall prey to one of those pesky bush rapists. He didn't put her in a taxi because he trusted himself more than a taxi, it wasn't very far, or perhaps, he had promised a friend that he would see her home safely or something. He might have gone into the house with her. He may have felt flattered by her attention, they might even have had consensual but not very coherent sex, initiated by her. Perhaps they started to have sex, and she fell asleep or changed her mind, so he left or stopped. Or he might have felt unattracted to her, felt worried about taking advantage, or she didn't want sex, so he left.

1. The guy was a rapist. He had noticed how she was all over him, and thought that he might get lucky. He offered to walk her home and look after her. When they got there, perhaps they would have had consensual sex. Or, she might have changed her mind halfway through, fallen asleep before or during, or she never wanted sex in the first place. The difference with the first scenario is that this man is a rapist, so he continues, or he pushes past smaller boundaries in order to get access to bigger ones. Boundaries are weaker when a person is that drunk. The difference is that this man takes advantage, whereas the man in the first scenario does not.

In either situation, they could have had consensual sex. Rapists don't commit rape every time they have sex with somebody. Some of the time it's consensual, perhaps most of the time. The difference is how they react when their partner is not so keen. A non rapist will stop, whereas a rapist carries on. That's literally the only difference.

You will notice that I did not put a scenario where the woman has consensual drunk sex and then wakes up in the morning and thinks "Shit!" and reports rape. That is because this is just not a likely scenario, as discussed many times in this thread. People who think that it is, or who claim to have known someone who has done it, are usually operating on massive misinformation about the nature of the encounter (which is not surprising considering they were not there), making massive assumptions about the nature of the encounter (which actually make no logical sense when you think about them properly) or the person that they know is a massive drama queen, who enjoys shouting their mouth off but was never actually going to go to the police in the first place, because they know themselves that nothing happened. So, again, misinformation.

Logically, if you've consensually had lots of sex before (including drunk sex) and never accused anyone of rape, surely the chances of you suddenly worrying about regretted sex enough to make a false accusation are really low?

I wonder if any prosecuter has run a case that way? It is as you say utterly illogical that a woman who is happy to have lots of casual sex, whether recreationally or professionally, is going to make a false accusation.

I for one would be of the assumption you were doing a good job.

Dervel do you mind if I asked what happened to your male friends?

I'll echo Buffy's call for more research. I think the "facts" both sides throw around are suspect for a myriad of reasons.

That is not to say I myself am not biased, because I very much am. However that is down to personal experience of only having had only two male friends sexually assaulted by women compared to actually having lost count of the number of female friends who have suffered either sexual assault or rape.

I know which I suspect is likely the bigger problem here.

Up thread it was raised about social pressure and differing consequences for women. I'd also like to raise the point of many men being frankly predatory in their attitudes towards sex. Men who may never actually commit an assault or rape, but when that is the backdrop of human sexuality it is hardly surprising rape is so common. I would like to take the opportunity to challenge that. Not for a moment do I believe that's your (feminists) job to do so, rather maybe how we as society should frame the discussion.

Yy Buffy. I might regret giving my last £20 to a homeless person when drunk and then needing to borrow money from a friend - doesn't mean I pull out a theft accusation.

scallops I think the idea that men are always desperate for it and will do anything that moves is nonsense. While women need to be coaxed into it and will probably think better of it in the morning.

Back to gender roles and stereotypes isn't it they need to begone asap and pdq imo.

It's to do with some kind of knights of the round table OH MY GOD I TOOK MY EYE OFF MY VIRTUE NOW I'M RUINED idea or something.

There was a rule brought in that they aren't allowed to bring up sexual history unless they can show it pertains to the case. A lawyer on a blog linked to ages ago on here said that the first thing the defence does in cases is apply to the judge to get sexual history included and if they succeed they know that's going to make things much easier for them.

Well yes Buffy. Those men who want to continue raping women and blaming women for it. Win win.