Discussion with female friend re Ched

[HenriettaTurkey]

So I posted an article on fb, with a link to an article on Ched Evans and the myth of male sexuality.

With it I wrote 'it's very simple. If she's drunk and you have sex with her, it's rape. That's the law'.

Several friends responded positively, saying such things as 'if in doubt assume the answer's no', 'it would be easier to move on if he at least acknowledged his act' etc

Then a female friend came on and, through various posts said I was being ridiculous as this meant that no-one could ever have a drink and have sex again.

After banging my head against the wall I realised you lovely folk would be able to help me construct a coherent response that doesn't rely on my usual, possibly unhelpful, sarcasm.

Help!

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 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.

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

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.

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.

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.

I understand your point smash, and what seven means.

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

X post!

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?

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?

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.

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.

If "i really want to have sex with you" sounds like "ireellawannavsxwiyou" thats a big clue to wait til the morning :)

That is just completely made up heartisaspade. The OP has confirmed that despite more nuanced and articulate posts by other friends this friend is still getting embroiled in "what is technically drunk" as if men can't understand that.

If "i really want to have sex with you" sounds ike "ireellawannavsxwiyou" thats a big clue to wait til the morning Well exactly!

Ched Evans knew he didn't have consent. He just didn't care.

And yy to Seven and Buffy - that is exactly what I was getting at.

All I initially came on to say was that the op's "it's simple if you have sex with her when she's drunk it's rape" was legally incorrect.

If you're going to go down the "i felt threatened" argument then you're going down a whole different route and I'm not going to speculate on an open forum about that, purely and simply because I have no desire to land Mumsnet in legal hot water.

Heart, no that's wrong: I've never posted about Israel/Gaza on fb, or anywhere else.

Usually I post about tennis, or my toddler. It's a thrilling read.

Assuming op is who i think she is, and there arent two mners having this exact debate on their fbs (!), her friend does appear to be in Israel? That right hen? (Feel like a bit of a weird fb stalker now!)

Still disagree about her statement being wrong though, if you use drunk in its dictionary meaning. Its people interpreting drunk as a glass of wine who are wrong. Technically

Heart, perhaps the other person has shared their views on their wall. OP disagrees with them, but did not say this?

I'd also still like to know what you meant, OP, by "the myth of male sexuality"?