Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Reelya]

The act becomes increasingly more severe an act of rape the more intoxicated everyone involved becomes, and the only source of information that can reliably ensure that you're not committing rape is increasingly unavailable.

If everyone is blind drunk then everyone is raping each other then.

Ok, blind drunk man and a stone cold sober woman. Man raped? What if the women gets drunk as well, then they have sex? Ok, so now it turns out the man wasn't raped, but is a rapist, because someone else got drunk?

What if the women has 1 glass of beer? Is that "just a little" rapey? What if a man has 1 glass of beer? Are we saying a man MUST be absolutely wacked out of his head to be drunk-raped, but with women there's a rape gradient based on relative drunkeness?

[DJ]

IMO it's best to simply treat the case as if no alcohol was involved. If there was consent, it's not a rape, even if it's regretted later. People sometimes regret having sex with someone even if they were sober. If there was no consent, then it's rape. IMO it's important to take a hard stance like this on all self-administered mind-altering substances, because if people can use intoxication as an excuse to get away with anything they will.

[scrdest]

IMO it's best to simply treat the case as if no alcohol was involved. If there was consent, it's not a rape, even if it's regretted later. People sometimes regret having sex with someone even if they were sober. If there was no consent, then it's rape. IMO it's important to take a hard stance like this on all self-administered mind-altering substances, because if people can use intoxication as an excuse to get away with anything they will.

Also, that made me think of a hidden danger of treating 'lightheaded consent' as rape:

If you do that, that someone who was actually rape-raped, but has no physical signs of damage may be treated the same as someone who had a lapse of judgement under influence and dismissed by third parties. And that is not a good prospect.

[Phmcw]

Let's add to the mix that a lot of people get wasted hoping for a one-night stand, and we have people complicit in their own rape.

But with the law as it is now, you are able to consent for a bunch of things when drunk, and that include sex.

I've been in the situation described above (two blind drunk peoples) and I really feel like it's morrally terrible to equate the result of my own bad decisions to the thing some girls I know have been through.

[Bauglir]

Cop-out. This doesn't answer the question - either all sex ever is rape, just ranging from 'just slightly' for things like emotional impulsiveness, or there is a point where it isn't - if so, where is that point?

It's not a cop-out to accept that the real world is a lot fuzzier than you're making it out to be. Context is everything. That said, I'd agree that there is a point where there's functionally no degree of rape at all, and that's when everybody involved takes the time to thoughtfully consider the act with no sense of urgency and no external chemical influences on their brain, where an external chemical influence is defined as any chemical that acts as or alters neurotransmitter behavior, which was not synthesized within the person in question's body and which is not an essential nutrient (since I know you're going to ask). There may need to be some clarification on essential nutrients, since there may be some ways of overdosing blah blah blah but I think we can all agree that this is a shitty nitpicking direction to take the conversation and I'm not going to continue it.

Point being, it basically never happens. And that's fine. Virtually everything everybody does has some shitty implications, and if you're going to insist on living a shit-free life you're going to have to blind yourself to a lot of the consequences of your actions. I mean, shit, your Internet connection generates a fair bit of pollution as a byproduct of simply existing, but nobody suggests destroying the Internet because that's a very tiny problem compared to the good it generates for society, and compared to the scale of pollution in other industries that can be changed to more significantly impact the environment. But it would be inane to insist that because the Internet's infrastructure produces very little pollution, no piece of it pollutes at all.

Living a good life is just about managing the shittiness of your actions to reach an acceptable level. In this case, figuring out the degree to which you've obtained consent, and that consent was meaningfully given, but they're both matters of degree and there is no simple, universal rule. You have to actually think about it, and you have to accept that your actions may have consequences you didn't intend, and that you're still responsible for them.

Furthermore, you need to punish rapists somehow, and law doesn't really work on a sliding scale. 'Your honor, but that rape was only slightly rapey' is a line of defence used by about zero people in the history of justice (at least modern, excluding things like class-based punishments a' la Hammurabi).

Yeah, sure, I didn't think we were talking about the law here. Fucked if I know how the law ought to handle it, and fucked if I'm going to have that conversation - I am not a lawyer.

Also, if unwittingly causing someone's death, AKA manslaughter, is something different from knowingly causing it due to a strong emotion is something different from cold-blooded killing, why doesn't 'unwitting rape' work the same way?

It totally does work that way. That doesn't make it not rape, though, and that much should be obvious.

If everyone is blind drunk then everyone is raping each other then.

Yup, I said that's a logical consequence of what I'm saying, and I'm pretty okay with that. It's possible for two drunk drivers to kill each other, too. You can have multiple people at fault.

Let's add to the mix that a lot of people get wasted hoping for a one-night stand, and we have people complicit in their own rape.

Yeah, sure, and in the situation where you know your partner got drunk with the expectation of having sex, it's a lot less rapey. Is that under debate? It's practically tautological! You're assuming a degree of prior consent in that situation, so of course there's more consent there than if you spiked somebody's punch or something. I thought we were discussing alcohol more generally - you can always change things by adding more premises, that's why context is so important.

I've been in the situation described above (two blind drunk peoples) and I really feel like it's morrally terrible to equate the result of my own bad decisions to the thing some girls I know have been through.

You're absolutely right - that's like equating negligent manslaughter and first degree murder, to use scrdest's analogy. The two aren't equivalent, but they're related under the same category.

[scriver]

+1, Baugbag.

[Phmcw]

Rape is to sexual misconduct what murder is to homicide : there is no need to lump other sexual misconduct with such a loaded term.

>I thought we were discussing alcohol more generally - you can always change things by adding more premises, that's why context is so important.

Our college parties were made under the premices that anyone single was more or less looking for someone. And drinking was there to facilitate the process.
So yeah, people routinely initiated sex while drunk, knowing that they were there for it. Many "ho god I'm back with my ex" morning were had, but it was a choice.

Anyway your premices are false : you can make a lot of legally binding choices while drunk.

[Bauglir]

Anyway your premices are false : you can make a lot of legally binding choices while drunk.

Why do you think the law is equivalent to morality?

[penguinofhonor]

+1, Baugbag.

Make that +2.

[Phmcw]

Anyway your premices are false : you can make a lot of legally binding choices while drunk.

Why do you think the law is equivalent to morality?

Morally, peoples get drunk and have sex routinely and don't have any problem about it. Most of the people I know, I included, did it.

Meanwhile some peoples, knowing they did harm, forced therselves, one way or another, on other peoples I know. Equating a fun filled night for both partners to a traumatic even that took years to heal seems morally wrong.

[Bauglir]

Morally, peoples get drunk and have sex routinely and don't have any problem about it. Most of the people I know, I included, did it.

Meanwhile some peoples, knowing they did harm, forced therselves, one way or another, on other peoples I know. Equating a fun filled night for both partners to a traumatic even that took years to heal seems morally wrong.

Then why's the law relevant? Why did you bring it up? I'm not dropping this.

Moreover, that's fine - clearly, everyone involved was okay with the level of risk, the level of ability to consent, and so on. Or at least, that's the situation as you're framing it, in which you assume that everybody consented a priori. In the specific context of an example crafted to be an acceptable context, of course the degree of rape in the situation is low enough that it was clearly permissible in light of the rewards (a fun-filled night for both partners).

But what the fuck does that have to do with the more general case where you can't assume all those preconditions implying prior consent? How does this demonstrate that alcohol only affects the ability to consent when it physically impairs speech?

[DJ]

It doesn't have to be law, in normal human interactions alcohol isn't an excuse either. I mean, if you're in an exclusive relationship and your SO admits to you that he/she got drunk and slept with somebody, is your reaction going to be "OMG, are you OK? Who was the asshole that raped you?" or "How could you do this to me? I trusted you!"

[Phmcw]

Morally, peoples get drunk and have sex routinely and don't have any problem about it. Most of the people I know, I included, did it.

Meanwhile some peoples, knowing they did harm, forced therselves, one way or another, on other peoples I know. Equating a fun filled night for both partners to a traumatic even that took years to heal seems morally wrong.

Then why's the law relevant? Why did you bring it up? I'm not dropping this.

Moreover, that's fine - clearly, everyone involved was okay with the level of risk, the level of possibility of consent, and so on. Or at least, that's the situation as you're framing it, in which you assume that everybody consented a priori. In the specific context of an example crafted to be an acceptable context, of course the degree of rape in the situation is low enough that it was clearly permissible in light of the rewards (a fun-filled night for both partners).

But what the fuck does that have to do with the more general case where you can't assume all those preconditions implying prior consent? How does this demonstrate that alcohol only affects the ability to consent when it physically impairs speech?

The way I "frame" it is my life during college in Bruxelles, and the one of my circle of friends. We don't assume peoples consented beforehand, we assume there is a "drunk" level where you are responsible for your action, where you're still yourslef just wilder and slightly stupider, and then there is a point where you're not coherent. Peoples not coherent were escorted to their dorms, peoples still coherent partied and if they scored, good for them.

But to call a sexual act "rape" I think that intend must be there, morally. To me it's having sex with someone you know wouldn't have sex with you, or are unsure if he'd have sex with you normally. In the case where they are both drunk, separated themselve with liberal application of cold water, they are not themselves (yeah that's what happened to me too).

Edit:

It doesn't have to be law, in normal human interactions alcohol isn't an excuse either. I mean, if you're in an exclusive relationship and your SO admits to you that he/she got drunk and slept with somebody, is your reaction going to be "OMG, are you OK? Who was the asshole that raped you?" or "How could you do this to me? I trusted you!"

Happened to me too : kissed the girlfriend of a friend, was too drunk to remember, friend didn't hold a gruge since I didn't know what I was doing.

[scrdest]

Then we heavily disagree on the very premises as far as ethics go. If it's 'slightly bad' then it's BAD. There's gradation of HOW bad it is, but it's still bad, an ethical 'shouldn't'. And the pollution I find irrelevant, because if you'd want to remove all pollution, you'd need to exterminate humanity altogether. And if we're going on that tangent, small amounts of pollution (total, not partial) are a non-issue, the problem begins where the pollution exceeds the capacity to process it by the ecosystem.

Your definition of not-rape is realistic pretty much only for Vulcans, and furthermore, IT'S FRICKING USELESS. The issue with rape is that it is emotionally traumatic, and you're broadening it to absurd breadth of human activities. That is cheapening the impact. And that is already a problem as it is with the victim-blaming et al.

Furthermore, so if someone makes an informed, thought-out decision, without duress or chemical interference, and later regrets it - rape? It has negative consequences, therefore it's bad, and it involved sec, therefore it's rape? That's just absurd. Applying consequentialist ethics to something as unpredictable as human emotions in the future means you're essentially reducing all ethical decisions to a coin toss.

Anyway your premices are false : you can make a lot of legally binding choices while drunk.

Why do you think the law is equivalent to morality?

Because that's the point of law at its most basic level. Law is institutionalized, applied morality. Not 'best' moral system, just a morality. Morality is 'this is Good, this is Bad', Law is 'this is Good, this is Bad, if you do Bad things, we will do a (specific) Bad thing to you in retaliation'. It doesn't need to be sane, or objectively good, but neither does any particular morality that may be held.

So in this specific case, the fact that you can make binding choices while drunk means that it is generally accepted that to the boundary of being X drunk, you are able to give meaningful consent and all parties are presumed to know this, and even if they don't, that doesn't exculpate them.

[Neonivek]

The issue with rape is that it is emotionally traumatic

This really depends on what definition you are using.

The rule of thumb I think I use is that Rape is when sex is done without consent, with consent is in doubt, when someone bypasses consent, or when someone cannot give consent but does anyway.

But obviously there are a lot of rules.

Saying you have lots and lots of money and the person sleeps with you only because they think you are rich? No, I personally wouldn't agree with that. Its really scummy though.
Putting on a convincing mask and telling them you are a SPECIFIC person? I count that. You bypassed consent.

that is already a problem as it is with the victim-blaming et al

I personally think the issue with victim blaming in rape situations is that I honestly don't think it is a proper use of cause and effect.

Because if the victim of something does something stupid... I am going to call them out on it. If someone goes "come on hit me" and someone hits them and their jaw breaks because they had a glass jaw... I'll call them out on it.

Yet someone with sexy clothes and flirtatious attitude is not "inviting negative sexual attention." At least that is how I interpret it. There is an expected code of conduct people follow that isn't bypassed because the other person is sexy. They are not to blame for that crime, SURE if they dressed as a nun chances are they wouldn't get targeted, but that is like saying that if the person earned less money he wouldn't get robbed.

But it really is more of an artifact of conservative thinking.