Rape: A hypothetical question

[guttaperk]

...inspired by recent events, but not intended as speculation about them

Comments

[nicehotsoup]

in my opinion, no. if she got drunk with intentions of sleeping with one person, how can we correctly say her intentions didn't change? I wouldn't have had sex with her if she was drunk, but that does it for some people, i guess.

i know one night i got drunk and hit on about five guys and, out of them all, i would've soberly slept with one.

[youngcaesar]

People cannot give consent if they're drunk, and people who have sex with them are taking advantage of that state, so yes.

[guttaperk]

(1) How do you define drunkenness? Does any state of inebriation apply? One drink? Three? Five?
(2) How about if consent- even if vague- was given before the onset of drunkenness? Does that change things? We can consent to people making us unconscious and doing surgical things to our bodies; is it possible to consent to people making us unconscious and doing recreational things to our bodies?

And is it possible to unravel these issues without traumatising everyone involved?

[accusehistory]

You don't wake up from surgery and "discover" you've been operated on. The analogy doesn't work imho.

[guttaperk]

"You don't wake up from surgery and "discover" you've been operated on"

True.

But you can:
- wake up from surgery having forgotten that you gave consent, as a side effect of the anaesthesia.
- wake up from surgery to find that they did more or less than you originally thought they would
- wake up from surgery to find that the results met your negotiated agreements but not your unspoken ones.

[accusehistory]

Well she can't remember having sex with all those guys, so how did she consent? It's rape.

[guttaperk]

http://community.livejournal.com/blackfolk/5714710.html?thread=109533206#t109533206

[ambienceman]

I'm missing the logic in this statement. How does not remembering what happened equate to her not being able to consent?

[littledrummrboy]

It's hard to say for me. While the law says its so, I typically call BS that people can't give consent when intoxicated both because a) I've been good and drunk and believe that regardless of how fucked up I get, at the end of the day I'm still responsible for my actions and b) oftentimes, as in this example, people, while still sober, make the plans that their night of drinking will include sexual activity which, while hard to prove, to me is consent before the fact.

I say all that to say: In the eyes of the law, yes it is rape. In my own personal judgment of the situation, IF all intoxicating substances she consumed were of her own free will (i.e. she wasn't dosed or given one thing and told it was another or anything) and the sex was what would be considered consensual by a reasonable person save for the intoxication, then no, it is not rape.

[accusehistory]

consent before the fact.

Here's the thing about consent: it can be taked back at any time during sex. If I consent to sex with you and halfway through I tell you to stop, would you keep going and tell me I've "consented before the fact"?

As for the scenerio given, she expected sex with ONE person, not a gang bang. And was checked out during the whole thing anyway, as she only "discovers" it in the morning.

[nicehotsoup]

and what's to say she didn't consent to all of them and not remember? i just think the whol scenario is too incredibly vague to make a good judgment on.

[guttaperk]

I actually agree with you. It's a horribly complicated, difficult issue that we are generally tempted to take simple ideological stances on; those stances easily fail when confronted with a complex reality.

[art_house_queen]

Agreed!

[yesternight]

I agree with this.