Ugh, it is hideous over there. When I first read your piece, I was impressed that the comments hadn't yet gotten shitty. No luck, I suppose.

What a cesspool. I've left 'em a piece of my mind.

And of course somebody felt the need to bring up the Duke rape case: “And how subhuman are you to judge the Duke 3 as guilty??� When will they stop whining about that?

And of course somebody felt the need to bring up the Duke rape case: “And how subhuman are you to judge the Duke 3 as guilty??� When will they stop whining about that?

NEVER.

Rarely comes along a chance--even if it might be false--for them to cry, "See! See! Women LIE about rape. They LIE. She LIED. Look, look, just like Twana Brawley! Black women are no good! Look at the Kobe Bryant case! Women are no good! You can't take them serisouly, they can be vindictive and ruin the lives of poor men everywhere. She LIED. She LIED! Save the menz!!"

They'll milk this for all it's not worth.

"Rarely comes along a chance--even if it might be false--for them to cry, "See! See! Women LIE about rape. They LIE. She LIED. Look, look, just like Twana Brawley! Black women are no good! Look at the Kobe Bryant case! Women are no good! You can't take them serisouly, they can be vindictive and ruin the lives of poor men everywhere. She LIED. She LIED! Save the menz!!"

But see - women do lie. Just as much as men. No more, no less.

And the problem is, if that was my son, he would be in prison for rape. I dont have the money or power to have gotten him his chance in the spotlight.

I also find a battle in this rape debate.

What if a woman and man had sex, both were beyond the point of buzzed, we are talking smashed.

Without any other particulars, who committed the crime in this case?

I guess my point is, why isnt the woman equally held responsible for her actions while drinking?

Are women subject to the same prosecution as men under these laws? Is it defined in the law as "a woman" or a "a person" who drinks to much?

Other than that, I agree with the article 100%.

Not a troll either, just confused and still learning.

What I'm saying Scilian, is that these people seem to be forgetting that 1) men LIE about rape as well, as in "I didn't do it" and 2) it's cases like these where they will take up the battle cry against OTHER victims of rape. While I know that false rape accusations can be real, I had an ex-boyfriend be threatened with a rape accusation by his ex if he didn't get back together with her, most women won't lie about rape because it's THEM that are always taken into account; What where they wearing, how were they acting, why were they alone in a room full of men or with one boy they probably knew. Why were they walking alone at night, why were they drunk, etc. etc. As a woman if you fail a rape charge all eyes are on YOU and with cases like this and the other two, most rape apologists know that if they keep screaming loudly enough about the false accusations then women with real cases of rape will be cowed into not filing charges.

As for your scenario, I define rape by not consenting and the saying of "No."

If both parties were totally smashed and they managed to have sex, then it's two drunken people having drunken sex. The woman wakes up the next morning and thinks she's been raped it's not going to matter to much in the long run because it's her word against his and guess what--she was SHITFACED. I want to know what court of law is going to take this at face value and then lock away an *innocent* boy.

However, if ONE person (the woman) is totally smashed and the man is either sober or less smashed (because if HE'S totally smashed how the hell is he getting his dick up?) and he has sex with her, there's a problem because she could niether say no or consent in the first place and I hate to break it to you but good little boys do crap like that all the time. No parent wants to believe their son is a rapist no more than they want to believe their son would eat and kill people, or go through a school shooting his classmates but we all know that happens. Women aren't raped in a vacuum.

I guess my point is, why isnt the woman equally held responsible for her actions while drinking?

She is, Scilian. If she raped someone while she was drunk, it would still be rape, even if she was drunk when she did it.

The thing is, women almost never rape men. But there's nothing inherent about rape that it can't be perpetrated by women against men. It just doesn't happen much.

But here's the problem with what it sounds like may be underlying your question. A woman hasn't "done" anything for which SHE should be responsible if she's been raped. She's a victim. A crime has been committed against her. Whether or not she was drunk has nothing to do with that very basic fact. If I stumble back to my apartment after a night of drinking (I've done this before in way more dangerous neighborhoods than was very smart) and I am mugged, the fact that I was drunk doesn't mean I was mugged any less. It was still a crime (and, if anything, the mugger is that much more reprehensible for having taken advantage of my intoxicated state). There's nothing there that I'm "responsible" for. No one ever deserves to be raped, period. PERIOD PERIOD PERIOD PERIOD PERIOD. With maybe an exclamation mark or two as well, because what the hell.

Scilian, a lot of people have brought up that very scenario in both the thread for "gray rape" here and at TPM cafe. If you can't find an absolute answer to that question I'm not surprised, it's a tricky question. However, this is why a lot of people are very much in favor of getting affirmative consent rather than a lack of negative consent. If you KNOW that someone said "yes" instead of just falling back on "they didn't say no" then no one can be blamed for anything.

There's a crime if one party resists and is forced, or is taken advantage of in some way (i.e, a woman is passed out and someone has sex with her). It's a lot harder for a woman to have sex with a man who's passed out drunk, for obvious reasons. Most men that drunk can't sustain an erection. Still, if a woman fed a man drinks or drugged him and then sexually assaulted him she should be arrested and tried for that crime. The problem is, that doesn't happen very often and also it tends to be harder to get men to report sexual assault. Sad but true.

I know I did my best to clarify things for you yesterday when you were asking question about EC in the comments for the post with the commercial for EC. I hope I did so there and here too.

Since I have to wait three hours before I can post there I'll post it here:

"An intoxicated woman might be thinking "no, I don't want to do this" and "I don't want him to do this to me, I want him to stop" without saying as much."

Why does she *have* to say something? If she's just lying there, not participating, and staring at the ceiling that should suggest to a non-rapist that she's not into it. A non-rapist would stop. He who procedes despite obvious disinterest or non-responsiveness is putting himself at risk of comitting rape. And if he doesn't notice she's not into it, he's either a rapist or a complete idiot about to become a rapist.

It's really disturbing to see so many men (on just about every forum on any thread about rape ever) spend so much time attempting to explain away rape. It's like you're deliberately trying to gauge how much you can coerce and manipulate someone else into sex, or how long you can persist, whine and "wear her down" before you become a rapist. That's really fucking creepy.

It's not at all difficult to avoid raping someone else. If you don't have freely given consent, don't fuck them. Why is that so hard to comprehend?

If they say 'no' - in whatever form it comes, stop. If they're unresponsive, stop. If you're confused about whether or not they've consented - you don't have consent. Stop.

What the fuck is so hard to understand?

If the only dispute one can come up with is "well he was drunk too, so he might not have noticed" then the obvious answer is to blame *him* for being so irresponsible and getting himself so drunk he's become to stupid to notice he's commiting rape.

Yep. My biggest concern (being a rape survivor) is that if my son woke and realized he was taken advantage of, could he equally press charges for rape against a woman. If the law is not gender specific, this would give him this right.

Thank you Genny once again. If the law is equally applied in this manner, I agree with it.

Getting consent shouldnt be an issue, imho.

I am not placing any blame on any person for being the victim of a crime. While I may not understand the fine particulars as well as some of you, I do have very sound logic and reasoning.

I think getting consent is as easy as "aare you sure you want to do this? We can think about this or wait" My husband said exactly that our first time. I dont see why more men cant.

What also pisses me off, is how no education is done in the realms of male drinking.

Instead of a if you drink you may get raped pamphlet, how about a "Alcohol may result in a loss of self control, and in a sexually charged situation, you may commit a crime that you would not have done sober" type thing?

Maybe if we educated the early teens about the effects of alcohol, some rapes may be avoided.

I understand rapes will occur regardless, but since women arent the ones perpetuating them, how about dealing with the perpetrator?

The Duke rape case makes me fear for my son, but after analyzing that fear, I realize I should be fearing the prosecutor, and the crimes he committed. This was a case that he planned on using for his gain. And in the face of evidence, he chose to further his agenda instead of justice. These cases are not the norm, but still a scary potential.

Thank you for all the help Law Fairy and Genny. tyvm!

Thanks for your time, its really helped me understand and mature as a young parent.

A mugger is the number one cause of mugging. Victims can be stupid but muggers commit the crime. This is about entitlement. Part of male privilege is never learning how to read women's signals. One of the best comments on consent and rape ever.

My browswer isn't zooming in on the comment, but I'm going to guess it's Thomas' about sex being performance versus commodity?

That is effing brilliant.

In case you missed it...

Thomas: I think the key to changing the rape culture is to change the view of sexuality from a commodity model to a performance model.

What I mean by a commodity model is the view that sex is something women have and men get; what Amanda Marcotte refers to as the "pussy oversoul" that women are guardians of and that men make applications for access to. Sex is like a ticket; women have them and men try to get them. Women may give them away or may trade them for something valuable, but it's a transaction in a good.

The commodity model is shared in common by both the libertines and the prudes of a patriarchy. To the libertine, guys want to maximize their take of tickets. The prudes want women to keep the tickets to buy something really important: the spouse; provider, protector, etc.

That whole model is wrong. Under that model, consent is not an affiramtive partnership. Instead, if someone tries to take a ticket and the owner doesn't object, then the ticket is free for the taking. Under this way of thinking, consent is the absence of "no." It is therefore economically rational to someone with this commodity concept of sex that it can be taken; rape is a property crime in that view. In the past, the crime was against the male owner of women (let's not sugar-coat it; until very recently women were in a legal way very much male property and still are in many places and ways). Even among more enlightened folks, if one takes a commodity view of sex, rape is still basically a property crime against the victim.

The better model is the performance model, where sex is a performance, and partnered sex is a collaboration between the partners; like dance or music.

Under a performance model, consent is not the absence of "no." Consent is affirmative participation. Who picks up a guitar and jams with a bassist who just stands there? Who dances with a partner who is just standing there and staring? In the absence of affirmative participation, there is no collaboration; forcing participation by coersion is not a property crime, but a crime of violence like kidnapping.

Under this model, looking for affirmative participation is built into the conception. If our boys learn this from their pre-adolescence, then the idea that consent is affirmative rather than the absence of objection will be ingrained.

The performance model has the added feature that it eliminates slut-baiting. A commodity is finite; if women give or trade away their tickets, they have lost something of value, and the relevant question is what they got in exchange. If sex is a performance, then the question is how well it worked out. There's no finite commodity to run out of, and nobody gets called a slut for jamming with too many musicians.

Ach.

I tried, Jessica, but I just couldn't post over there.

-- ACS

No one, Scilian.

Now for the answer to your real question: Yes, if you jump on top of a woman who is too drunk to fight back and fuck her against her will, you raped her. And you suck.

Amanda, every time I think I could not be a bigger fan of yours, you do or say something that makes me a bigger fan. Thank you, thank you, thank you. For everything. For just existing.

"Alcohol may result in a loss of self control, and in a sexually charged situation, you may commit a crime that you would not have done sober" type thing?

That has to be one of the sanest ways of getting through to men that I've heard.

My undergrad had a horrible skit they put on about date rape. The woman didn't say no, the guy didn't ask for consent, and we were all supposed to walk away more enlightened. (Yeah, the guy should ask for consent. Anything less than a "Please f--- me now" is, IMHO, a resounding "NO!")

I wonder, had someone said to the guys in the audience that THEY need to watch their drinking and THEY need to watch their behaviour while drunk because THEY can be the problem (unwittingly, recklessly, or deliberately), maybe college rape wouldn't be such a problem.

Wow, Donna, that was an excellent paraphrasing of the "pussy oversoul." Nice way to break down the economy of sex. I'd expand the commodity model a little further--since we use sex like currency, women who fuck without wanting anything in return become like scabs; they're driving down everyone else's wages. That's another reason why men and women alike censure "sluts," they're devaluing the "tickets" that everyone else wants to exchange for something better.

Jenny, I should format correctly. That was written by the estimable Thomas.

Ahem. I would like to state for the record that I came up with the "pussy oversoul" concept.

Also waiting for approval to comment at TPMCafe, but for what it's worth, I will.

As JacklynF said of the thread over there, what a disgusting cesspool.

Thanks for braving it with your excellent post, Jessica.

"And of course somebody felt the need to bring up the Duke rape case: 'And how subhuman are you to judge the Duke 3 as guilty??' When will they stop whining about that?" – sojourner

You do realize the Duke three still face decades in prison (they still face charges of sexual assault and kidnapping), right? Personally, I will stop “whining� when all charges are dropped and the engineers and enablers of this hoax are punished for their actions.

i wanted to go over there and comment, but alas! it would take them 2 days to approve me for posting? awesome. NOT.

so i'll put my two cents here:
Amand, you are fucking brilliant, and I love your comments.

Jill, great post.

there is no ambiguity. if she doesn't say some form of "yes", it is rape. period. i'm sick and tired of women being blamed for being raped. i've been raped, and that's exactly what he said after he was done: "why didn't you say 'no' more?" um, I DID SAY NO. i said NO to sex pre-emptively, before he even got on top of me. he was my boyfriend at the time, and he was drunk, and yeah maybe i shouldn't have been over at his house after our fight, but i was too tired to drive myself home. i said, clearly, I DO NOT WANT TO HAVE SEX WITH YOU. and yet he still raped me. did i fight him off? no. why, you may ask? because i'd been raped before, and i FROZE. do people not even realize that when you are in that kind of position, you freeze because you don't know what to do, or you have so many conflicting emotions that "fight or flight" doesn't really kick in?

he was my boyfriend, and he raped me. i was blamed for it by him, and to this day i have to deal with that. he probably doesn't even remember that he raped me, and will never have to apologize. instead, i have to live with the trust issues he engendered in me. because he didn't listen, and he didn't care, and he fucking raped me.

did i press charges? no, i didn't. i was confused, and since there was no evidence of a fight, no lawyer was going to take my case. THE LAW IS NOT ON THE VICTIM'S SIDE. this i learned from lawyer friends of mine. if i didn't fight, if he wasn't injured by me, if i don't have enough vaginal tearing, if i was even a little inebriated too, well, then it was all my fault for being a fucking cock tease and having a drink and having sex in the first place!

and i tell you, i'm sick to death of this kind of behavior being defended by other men, being defended by women and being defended by the law.

positive consent is the only consent that matters, not her "not saying no". positive consent is what we should be teaching all of our kids, and i sometimes really want to become a sex educator so that i can write the comprehensive sex ed that should be taught: not just STD's and pregnancy, but how to navigate emotional relationships, set up and stand by your personal boundaries, how to respect others' personal boundaries, and positive consent is the only consent. it doesn't have to be "do you want to have sex?" "yes!"; but that is the most straight-forward way to give positive consent.

and also? women don't ask to get raped because they want to go out and have a drink and go dancing; they aren't asking to be raped because they want to walk home from the bar; they are not asking for rape because they date people. all of that is false, and this idea that women can avoid rape by "not going out alone at night" just hampers our personal freedom. why don't men have their personal freedoms curtailed in this way? oh right- because men rape women, not the other way around. women aren't supposed to "put themselves in danger", but considering that 90% of rapes happen to women by men *that they are intimate with*, that kind of means more like "well, don't date anyone; never get married; avoid your fathers; never ever be alone with a man ever; and never trust a man to be your intimate partner". you want us to REALLY "curtail our risk"? that would mean that all women would become lesbians. that's, as far as the stats go, the only way to "take responsibility" for our risks: never have male lovers, never be friends with men, never let ourselves be alone with any man whatsoever and especially those who are our intimates.

so, there. and i don't hate men, to the trolls who will try to twist my words here. i love men! i love men who love women enough to actually get consent. i don't believe that all men are rapists, but i do know from personal experience just how much our society allows rape and is an active rape-inspiring society.

i love my partner, he is so awesome, and he always gets consent before sex. usually in really hot ways; what could be more hot than having your partner enthusiastically asking.telling you to fuck them? shit, that's hot.

"i sometimes really want to become a sex educator so that i can write the comprehensive sex ed that should be taught: not just STD's and pregnancy, but how to navigate emotional relationships, set up and stand by your personal boundaries, how to respect others' personal boundaries, and positive consent is the only consent"

FYI - there is such a program, called OWL, that's part of Unitarian Universalism. It's a really good curriculum in many ways. And chances are, if there's a UU organization near you, they will be happy to have volunteers to teach the class!

"No one, Scilian.

Now for the answer to your real question: Yes, if you jump on top of a woman who is too drunk to fight back and fuck her against her will, you raped her. And you suck."

That wasnt my question. My question was, if a guy wakes up with regret, after a heavy night of drinking, can he legally press the same charges?

If not then the law is bunk. If so, it is fair, and promotes a consent environment.

Ohh and Amanda Marcotte, your a tool. And you suck more.

um . . . i'm pretty sure that she was saying "you suck" if you are the person who rapes a woman.

That wasnt my question. My question was, if a guy wakes up with regret, after a heavy night of drinking, can he legally press the same charges?

I haven't seen anyone suggest that women should be able to press rape charges just because they regret having sex after-the-fact. I'm pretty sure several people have very specifically said that regretable sex is not rape.

I think that the issue is more about "Grey Rape" - which is the term that people use to convince women who've been raped that it's really their own fault, and doesn't count as rape.

In the article's comment section, the whole drunk/rape thing has been discussed pretty thoroughly.

One of the arguments stated, if your a male, and you have sex with a drunk female, you have then taken advantage of someone in a disadvantaged state, hence the crime rape being committed.

Then the analogy (a very powerful and accurate as can be analogy, props to the poster) about drunk driving was brought up, about how even though a male may be drunk as well, he still commits a crime once he has sex with a female. Drivers would still be held for their actions regardless of their alcohol intake, because the criminal act is committed while intoxicated, and therefore intoxication is not an excuse.

So my question behind that reason was, if a male woke up after having a drunk night of sex with me, but he was to drunk to give legal consent, did I then commit rape?

I have a very bad problem of articulating myself properly, I apologize. I am a math and sciences grad student, I seriously lack in the areas of self expression and articulation. My apologies if it has taken 3-4 posts now to actually write clearly what I was I originally trying to say.

"I think that the issue is more about "Grey Rape" - which is the term that people use to convince women who've been raped that it's really their own fault, and doesn't count as rape."

I dunno. I think by "Grey Rape" people are talking about at least three different things:

(1) Getting raped, and discounting it as your own fault as you were drunk.

(2) Waking up, not remembering exactly what happened the night before, and so being unsure about what happened and whether you were raped or not.

(3) Consenting to sex while drunk, regreting it and then using the term 'grey rape' to describe your regrets.

Sicilian;

The whole alcohol thing is a big distraction. If you consent it isn't rape. If you don't consent it is rape. It's that simple. There's no special rules just because alcohol is involved.

The 'too drunk to give legal consent' bit serves no purpose. If someone wakes up after having a drunk night of sex without consent then it is rape. The problem is people think drunk women are fair game and so don't worry about their consent, but that's not a problem with the drink or too drunk. It's a problem with people ignoring consent.