Whether or not you consented to being impaired does not change the fact that you are impaired, and thus unable to consent to anything further. To be clear, I don't think that all drunken sex is rape. I just don't think the issue is so black-and-white. I hate it when people try to oversimplify consent -- if it were simply as easy as saying "consent is sexy" or "a clear and continuing 'yes'" then
it wouldn't be a problem. The fact that solutions have to be devised and lines have to be drawn in the first place
proves that it's not so obvious, and it can only be detrimental to treat it as such.
Here's the plain facts as I see them: It's a well-documented effect of alcohol that it makes you easier to sway and more likely to do things you would never do sober. Sure, you decided to enter that state. But you
still wouldn't do those things sober, even though you
would enter that impaired state. And not all drunken sex can be rape because some sex you have while drunk
is sex you would have sober. On the other hand, the other person has
no way of knowing what you would do drunk that you wouldn't do sober, and they may
also be drunk, in which case they might not have done it sober
either. This is the level of murkiness within which law simply cannot be made. It will not be enforced fairly, period. The only real solution by which innocent people do not go to jail is to ban alcohol. And we all know how well that worked out the last time we tried it.
The only thing we can do about it is to make a cultural standard whereby we do not take advantage of people who are drunk unless we know that they would also consent to it if they were sober, i.e., they are your boyfriend or girlfriend, or you've done it in the past while sober, etc. We cannot make a moral high ground whereby we pass down judgment onto other people. And the good news is that this cultural standard
already exists for the most part. But this will only save people from being victimized by the well-meaning; no one who spikes someone else's drink does so with good intentions. On the plus side, this is much less murky and we can and do prosecute people for doing it. What about just getting someone drunk normally? If you yourself don't drink then it looks pretty suspicious and is practically the same thing. I'm no lawyer but I'm sure there's precedent for prosecution there also.
In short: Drink responsibly, and report those who deliberately take advantage of others to the authorities. Vote in federal and local elections.
Also rape culture does not exist.Basically, Rolan, yes, if they actually consented to it, and weren't pressured into it, then it's not rape. But there's also a lot of cases where that's not what happens. And since we can't read people's minds and the like, it becomes very difficult to tell who's lying if one says 's/he agreed' and the other says 's/he made me'. And if we just assume that the person saying they agreed is right? Well, you get the rape-culture we have now, and shit is fucked up.
The problem there is that we generally operate under the assumption of "innocent until proven guilty", generally for very good reasons, and we can't just make exceptions for certain tricky crimes just because "rape". If that's "rape culture", then its still better than whatever the alternative is.
In my experience, many Americans do not know of or do not believe in "innocent until proven guilty." It's pretty depressing.