'A woman who drinks to get drunk is deliberatly endagering herself and inviting rape' Oh my Gosh

[SuperTheoryofSuperEverything]

TThis is the opinion of my seemingly reasonable policeman uncle.

TBH any stray loon can accuse anyone of anything. I am not immune to my next-door neighbours accusing me of persecuting their cat if they decide to do it.

False allegations of rape are the result of a small number of people who are unhinged/malicious. They are not common.

I'm not going to warn my sons about the dangers of being falsely accused of rape, any more than I'm going to warn them about being falsely accused of mugging, or indeed, stealing cars or fraud, which are things friends of mine have been falsely (I assume) accused of.

I will talk to my children about alcohol and consent and the importance of being absolutely certain that the person you are about to have sex with actually wants to do it, and not only wants to at that moment, but won't regret it in the morning. And not because they might get into trouble, but because of, you know, being a decent human being.

IWouldNotCouldNotWithAGoat wrote - "I will still be warning my son that the danger does exist, just as I will be warning him that he could be one of the 5 people a year* who die after taking a dodgy ecstasy tablet"

Statistically, a British man has about the same chance of being falsely accused of rape as he has of being raped himself.

8% of recorded rapes = approximately 1200 per year.
That's about the same number of men who are raped per year.

I've got a right one on that other thread

Gosh I didn't know that Vesuvia.

That figure is for recorded rapes, is it?

Vesuvia that is a very interesting stat - thank you.

This is all really making me think about my POV so thanks all.

HerBeatitude - "That figure is for recorded rapes, is it?"

The rapes figure is recorded rapes from the British Crime Survey 2009/10.

The 8% comes from the Wikipedia article linked to in IWouldNotCouldNotWithAGoat's
Wed 08-Dec-10 16:16:32 post (a statistic that comes from a UK Home Office report).

ISNT, my posts have been reasonably moderated on this thread. I don't think what I've said is 'utter bollocks.'

And your loud gob isn't going to change my opinion.

The issue is emotive, for sure. In my twenties, I got bollocksed so many times, I'm pretty sure I got 'raped' whilst insensible on a fair few occasions.

That being in the sense that I was half-asleep, and someone was prodding their penis into me despite my feeble protests. I can't say it scarred me for life, because I invited it by being pissed in the first place. I doubt the guy felt that great about himself in the morning, either. Alcohol does what it says on the tin.

There is a dividing gulf between that type of sexual encounter, and being jumped whilst walking home with your fish and chips, and being genuinely assaulted.

ah desi, I get it now

I see you subscribe to the view that "real" rape is only when a stranger drags you off the street

In most instances, I pretty much do.

Yes.

If two drunken folks go back to an apartment, consensually, then I think the law finds it difficult to establish what happened next.

I don't think that's a difficult concept to grasp.

Interesting, Desi.

Can I ask how you would feel if your daughter told you that on more than one occasion a guy had had sex with her without her consent while she pleaded with him to stop?

I would say that a bloke shagging a semi-conscious woman while she asked asked him to stop was pretty cut and dried TBH.

Just because you don't want to consider yourself a victim of anything, and it hasn't had any lasting effects on you, doesn't give you the right to tell other women who have been in those situations that they haven't been raped.

And you're confirming that you think that it's really common for women to complain to the police that they have been raped, simply because they regret an ill-advised drunken shag. That is bollocks. In the sense that it's not true. It is not common for women to report men to the police for rape as they regret having sex with them.

I also find it depressing that you knew so many men when you were young who would do that. It is not normal behaviour for a man to shag a semi conscious woman while she asks him to stop. That is not what most men do, they would be horrified at the suggestion. Because they would understand, correctly, that shagging someone who is asking them to stop is rape.

desi, I was date raped after we had both been drinking

are you denying that I was raped ?

Just because the law finds something difficult doesn't mean there's no right or wrong about it, nor is it impossible to decide exactly where wrong was done.

The issue of what constitutes rape, according to the law, is consent, not the long or short duration of after effects or where the rape occurs (bushes/ dark alley or your own room). Since 1976, the law has acknowledged rape within marriage as a legal possibility, and as a crime. Unfortunately, given the sad prevailing attitudes, even the attitudes of some women as evidenced on this thread, it is the woman who goes on trial if she is raped while drunk. This is because of the difficulty of establishing consent or lack thereof and the problems Beachcomber put so well in her post of 13:36:38 -- rape is 'too bad a crime to convict a man of/no big deal something any man could do if he had too much to drink.' The nature of rape as its victims experience it has not so far penetrated into the legal approach to it.

Desiderata, how come it is only rape that is invited by women while drunk. Are men routinely raped by other men while drunk? Are crimes such as burglary invited by drunk women? Murder? There is no logic involved in your idea that you invited or encouraged a crime by your drunkenness. Men rape drunk women because they believe they are entitled to use women's bodies and because it's easy.

I have every right to state my case.

I got fucking drunk, and I got fucking shagged, on numerous occasions when I was young.

I didn't bother me. I saw it for what it was.

Instead of pandering to the feminine cause, 100% of the time, perhaps it would be good to stop and consider how your behaviour, when drunk, can lead to outcomes.

Policemen are used to picking up drunken folk every weekend.

The OP's uncle's view is jaundiced for a reason.

As I say, my opinions are limited to consensual, flirtatious drunkeness. If you walk down the street stark naked, you shouldn't expect to be abused. But if you go to a man's flat, then that's a different story.

Any gal who disagrees is naive.

You have no right to tell other women that they have brought their rapes on themselves, that they are to blame, and that however much they protested to their attacker they were not actually raped.

You can state your case, if you are happy with what all those men (how on earth did you meet so many godawful men) did that's up to you. Just don't deny the experiences of other women, and call them naive for expressing what is the truth ie sex without consent is rape.

Yes, you have a right to state your case, desi

The aggression is rather misplaced though

and you didn't answer my question

No of course that wasn't rape AF.

Nor was mine, as I knew him and was alone with him. But hold on, I was sober! So maybe it was after all...

It's so hard to tell...

it's a shame there isn't quite a clear line, like, I don't know, sex without consent is rape...

Actually, our sons (those of us who have sons) if they get pissed, are much more at risk of getting beaten up, stabbed, robbed or of hurting themselves by taking up stupid dares than they are of being falsely accused of rape.
I'm going to teach my son the core fact about sex, which is that it's supposed to be enjoyable for all concerned (the collaboration model, not the commodity model).

Desiderata, is it the case with the men who had sex with you while you were drunk, that they were men who you might not have minded having sex with anyway?
Please understand that I am absolutely not suggesting that you are a 'slut who deserves it', I am wondering if your interpretation of what happened to you might have been different if these opportunistic willy-wavers had been people you actively disliked or found disgusting.

OMG @ Desiderata
"someone was prodding their penis into me despite my feeble protests"

If you were protesting, you certainly weren't turned on. WHy would a man want to have sex with a woman who wasn't turned on by him????
that's rape.

Interesting blog here

'Too often genuine consent is viewed as optional. Instead what many people seem to believe in is setting a tolerable level and context for non-consent.'

ISNT, I think your post about me on Wednesday at 10.25 is really rude. I am clearly not saying that women are passive in sex, and have explained this to you in previous points.

My posts were about people who were extremely drunk, and how that could make some people incapable of giving consent and other people incapable of interpreting signs of consent. It is you that keeps turning it into a general thing about passive women.

All of these points were in a discussion about an incident where the only person on here with knowledge of the incident has said that a sober person may have wondered if the woman was capable of consent. I have mentioned this several times and yet you are still ignoring this and trying to make out that this is about passivity.

I don't know why you are not arguing against Desiderata - you seemed to be stating the same kind of opinions as her earlier.