Alcohol and drugs dissolve clear boundaries of consent. Mostly that works out okay. Sometimes it doesn’t.
Editor’s note: This is a difficult article to read, and to publish. It is a frank, open confession about a certain commonly-accepted form of rape culture, and readers with rape triggers should probably avoid reading it. We at the Good Men Project do not endorse or support the author’s worldview, but it does speak to a very common experience that is often taken for granted and rarely talked about, except in vague and theoretical terms. We thank the author for being willing to speak openly about it, and share his struggle with his own experiences, though we want to make very clear that we do not agree with his conclusions.
When you party, when you move in party circles, you accept certain tradeoffs.
You accept that you’ll always be the bad guy in after-school specials and sitcoms about teenagers. You’re the bad kid who offers Buffy Summers a beer and gets her almost eaten by a snake demon. You accept that you won’t always be able to piece together everything that happened the next day. You’re forced to enjoy Katy Perry’s “Last Friday Night” not because you like Katy Perry but because you just plain recognize it.
You accept these tradeoffs because they come with amazing times. They come with glowing memories of an intensity entirely beyond the mundane, they come with crazy sex with amazing people, they come with living a few hours at a time in a world where anything, anything at all, can happen. I’ve moved from one party scene to another my whole adult life, because nobody wants to be that creepy old person or that inappropriately young person, but there are always plenty of people who won’t walk away from that incredible sense of liberation and possibility that you only find at the bottom of the bottle and a hot room full of crazy people.
I swear to God, it is only after the fact that you start figuring out that one of the tradeoffs you’ve accepted is a certain amount of rape. The way crooked businesses accept paying fines for their infractions as the cost of doing business, you gradually, an inch at a time, realize that some of the stories you’ve heard, some of the stories you’ve lived, didn’t involve what they call good consent nowadays.
♦◊♦
With what I’ve learned as an adult, I’m pretty sure I’m technically a rapist. Technically nothing. One woman told me herself. Our encounter was years before—I’d been in a drinking contest and she’d been drinking and flirting with me (yes, actually flirting) all evening. As blurry and fucked-up as I was, I read her kiss of congratulation to me as a stronger signal than it was, and with friends hooting and cheering us on, I pressed her up against a wall and… well. Call it rape or call it a particularly harsh third base, I walked away with the impression that it had been consensual, if not really sensible. (She had a boyfriend at the time, but their boundaries were fuzzy.)
Years later, she was in a recovery program—not for alcohol, ironically—and she got in touch with me during the part where she made peace with her past. She wanted to clarify that what had happened between us was without her consent, that it hurt her physically and emotionally, that it was, yes, rape.
We talk about who is and is not a rapist, like it’s an inextricable part of their identity. “I’m a Libra, a diabetic, and a rapist.” That doesn’t work, though. Evidently I walked around for years as a rapist, totally unaware. Nobody stuck that label on me, I certainly never applied it to myself, even now it only feels like it fits when I’m severely depressed. The label, the crime, simply coalesced for me one day, dragging years of backstory behind it.
That is the damnable thing. We all cluck our tongues at those evil bastards who force themselves on girls—or guys—who are insensibly passed out. At the same time, we all acknowledge that a glass or two of wine helps pave the way for a lot of good times. And in the trackless, unmappable gray swamps in between, we cough and change the subject.
In the real world, especially among experienced drinkers, being blackout drunk doesn’t necessarily look like being passed out on the floor, helpless prey for any passing predator. It can look like being drunk, but fully in control. It can look like being passionately excited. It can look like being a great dancer. It can look like being very sexually aggressive.
It’s not just booze, of course. Ecstasy makes everything incredibly tactile and you want to touch everyone. Weed makes some people insatiably horny. I had to fend off a young woman recently who was talking a mile a minute and sliding her hands inside my shirt, I was still together enough to tell she wasn’t all there, on what turned out to be a mixture of acid and cocaine. There is plenty of fun stuff out there, but mostly it’s booze. For the majority of people, it’s going to be drinking they have to watch out for.
♦◊♦
A friend of mine once told me about a girl who he knew for a fact had only had two drinks. He didn’t know she was on prescription medication that amplified those two drinks beyond all measure. He thought she was just very horny when she wouldn’t leave him alone or take “Are you okay?” for an answer. It wasn’t until she kept calling him by the wrong name and couldn’t remember the right one that he realized she was not able to consent, and called a halt to things before they went any further. He says he had to dissuade her from pursuing things further, because she was really into it, apart from not knowing who he was or where she was.
“Can you imagine?” he tells me in horrified tones. “I was almost a rapist.”
How do I tell him that I was in a similar position and made a different call? How do I tell him that I am what he’s terrified he almost was?
Here’s the plain, awful fact: people can have more and better sex drunk than they can sober. Some of the best, most fulfilling relationships of my life have started out with joyously drunken sex. I’ve had amazing times, orgies sometimes, where it’s simultaneously true that everyone’s consenting and having fun, and that they wouldn’t be consenting and having fun if they were stone sober.
Those aren’t the times that bother me. The ones that bother me are the ones where I got loaded, had some fun with a lady, and then she never wanted to contact me again. Messages go unanswered, social contact is dropped.
There are men, rape-apologist pieces of shit, who will tell you that women cry “rape” every time they have sex they later regret. I carry no brief for those assholes. What eats at me is that there’ve been cases, more than one and less than six, in my life where either explanation would seem plausible. If a woman had consensual sex with a guy because they were both drunk, and later she decided he was a loser and she regretted it, she might refuse to have further contact with him because, hey, awkward. But if a woman was raped by a man who thought she was still capable of consent when she was too far gone, she might refuse to have further contact with him because, hey, rapist.
That’s not the worst part either.
It’s been pointed out to me that I’m using a lot of heteronormative language here, men/me as rapist, women as rape victims, and I honest to God don’t mean to do that. It’s just the linguistic habits I grew up with.
But there have been times I’ve cut off all contact with women after drunkenly fooling around with them, the same criterion that, in reverse, makes me suspect myself of rape.
There have been times of “I regret going to bed with her” and times of “I don’t recall going to bed with her.”
There’s been at least one time I was informed, days after the fact, by multiple eyewitnesses, that I’d had sex with a girl. This came as news to me, and explained a couple messages I’d gotten from her, a girl I generally had no interest in getting involved with.
It must be bad manners to admit to being a rapist and to also say one is a rape survivor, all in one article. I don’t know any set of social mores where that’s okay. I certainly don’t feel like a rape survivor, whatever that’s supposed to feel like. I just can’t quite find a workable standard where I’m one but not the other. I don’t say that as any kind of apology or justification for my actions or my mistakes. I’m just trying to state the facts nobody ever quite wants to state.
Some might think it’s monstrous of me to keep drinking, keep partying. But I have had so many good, positive, happy experiences because I took a chance and altered my state and connected with someone else sexually, it seems crazy to throw all that away. Do people who’ve been in car accidents give up driving?
When I sit down and think about it, it seems like I’ve accepted a certain amount of rape as the cost of doing business, and so have most of the people I know. And that seems like the most sick, fucked-up, broken solution to anything ever. And maybe finding it livable-with condemns us all to hell. I don’t know. I can’t even talk about it under my own name.
For more on the Good Men Project’s decision to publish this story, see Joanna Schroeder’s “This Is Why We Published A Rapist’s Story” on the Good Feed Blog.
Photo—NathanPeck/Flickr
About Anonymous
Here’s my response:
http://bellejarblog.wordpress.com/2012/12/11/id-rather-risk-rape-than-quit-partying-rape-culture-and-the-good-men-project/
I disagree with your view on the GMP publishing it. To me it is important to highlight how some people behave as a warning to others, so we can deconstruct their actions and show, as you just did, how it is rape, how it is wrong. Rape culture will only be increased by NOT publishing such material because less people will get a glimpse into the excuses made, the danger of alcohol, etc. So please don’t insult the GMP because you’d rather sweep important issues under the carpet.
I don’t think that I’m trying to sweep anything under the carpet.
And I’ve reconsidered what I said about wishing GMP hadn’t published this; I just wish that they’d published it differently. I think what mostly angers/frustrates me is their introduction. I wish that they had:
a) been clearer that this man is most probably an addict with severe substance abuse problems (I know that this was discussed in another article, but I would have liked to have seen it in this article as well)
b) talked about how addiction warps a person’s thoughts and behaviour
c) talked about the ways in which people facing similar addictions can get help
d) discussed how this contributes to rape culture
e) discussed how rape culture harms both men and women
f) reinforced how incredibly wrong this guy is, beyond just saying “we don’t agree with him”
I guess that I worry that without these things, plastering his rationalizations across the internet just helps other people rationalize this type of behaviour. This article needs more to it in order to help bring down rape culture.
We are going to continue to talk about all of those things, Anabelle. Thanks for your suggestions.
When you do, I hope you also require some evidence to support this notion of “rape culture” that otherwise goes unquestioned in a lot of discussions.
This is a good starting point: http://www.shakesville.com/2009/10/rape-culture-101.html
This is also good: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFt8N1cf7mc
I would be happy to write something about rape culture, and the ways that it hurts both men and women, if that would be something that the GMP would be interested in.
Annabelle, that would be great. We are looking for as many voices in this conversation as possible. Thank you. You can send the article directly to me, lisa@goodmenproject.com
That article is insane. Going by it “rape culture” is things like the application of the presumption of innocence in court (media avoiding the word when describing trials to avoid being sued for slander, judges telling people to avoid the word in trials, etc…) or just the fact that rape occurs.
African Americans are more likely to murder and be murdered in the US than other racial groups, would calling African American culture a “murder culture” be okay? Hell no.
A society in which rape is considered a crime about as bad as murder can NOT be called a rape culture. A “real” rape culture would be one where people who rape are actually seen as positive role models BECAUSE of their raping. That is not the case at all.
Going by that article, the only way not to be a “rape culture” would be to preemptively castrate all males and execute on the spot anyone any woman accuses of rape.
I agree, the whole discourse on “rape culture” baffles me, particularly because it can be defined as this:
“A rape culture is a complex of beliefs that encourages male sexual aggression and supports violence against women.”
and this:
“…a culture in which…prevalent attitudes, norms, practices, and media normalize, excuse, tolerate, or even condone rape.”
You will notice in any discussion surrounding Rape Culture there is an assertion that rape and rape jokes are tools used by men as a threat to “keep women in their place” or that the cause of rape culture is the “domination or objectification of women,” and a lot of these discussions ignore a very important fact (well until a man says something which results in a barrage of “Jeeze why does everything have to be about the menz?”):
There is very little data on how often women have sex with men without the man’s consent, and there is a strong possibility as revealed by the recent CDC study that the frequency of non-consensual woman-on-male encounters is almost 1-to-1 with male-on-female rape.
If we define rape as a non-consensual sexual encounter, then the CDC survey puts the rate of female perpetrators at close to 40%.
Which begs the question, if rape culture really exists, if we want to get rid of a rape culture, and if a rape culture is the normalization of rape or the denial or blaming of victims why do we only talk about male-on-female non-consensual sexual encounters, or more recently male-on-male?
If feminists want to eradicate ‘rape culture,’ then why were feminists celebrating the new definition of rape which still denies the experiences of almost half of all estimated victims of non-consensual sex in 2010? Why do we not hear of people like Carol Tracy who led the Women’s Law Project in the new definition or Eleanor Smeal of the Feminist Majority Foundation being called “rape apologists” for asserting things like “If you can’t measure it accurately, you can’t monitor it and you can’t direct appropriate resources to deal with the problem” while ignoring that the new definition still doesn’t accurately measure almost half of reported non-consensual sexual experiences?
Isn’t saying “well guys always want sex, so he must have wanted it” victim blaming?
If a rape culture denies or normalizes rape and the definition of rape culture asserts that rape culture is about men having power over women, then isn’t the definition of rape culture an example of rape culture?
Doesn’t that make every Take Back the Night, every anti-rape ad that features only male-on-female rape, VAWA, and every feminist article that perpetuates the highly gendered rape statistics that denies the existence of half of the problem or insists that “silly menz always making things about them” the perpetuation of rape culture, and doesn’t that make everyone who is fighting for an end to “rape culture” that doesn’t recognize female-on-male incidents “rape apologists?”
Spectacular points. I just *wonder* why there are no responses
I wish I could like your post somehow, but wordpress sucks.
It is absurd and frankly a bit dumb to think that men being raped and women being raped is 1 to 1. But even more importantly 90% of the time its men doing the raping.
@Sara, absurd why?
20% of rapists are female according to the CDC NISVS2010 if you include men forced to penetrate as rape. The 1:1 parity stat is the 12 months before the survey was taken time period where equal numbers of men n women reported being raped. For lifetime about 1 in 5 rapes was perpetrated by a woman on a man, but this doesn’t include prison rape statistics.
It’s utterly absurd to think men do 90% of the raping given new stats have found otherwise and have been out for quite some time. 80% is more closer to reality based off the latest stats.
I am also in a program of Recovery, and hear a lot about rape. Most from survivors; it is hard even in those anonymous places for people to admit they’ve raped; however many do with their sponsor, priest, or trusted friend, and make their amends (as opposed to continuing to justify this lifestyle).
I was raped at a party after drinking enough I couldn’t give consent. By two men. Today I’ve forgiven those men as well as all who’ve wronged me, and today I’m grateful to be in Recovery. However that doesn’t mean those men’s actions were OK. Forgiveness was a gift I gave myself.
I don’t think partying is going to continue to work out for you, and your actions are clearly not working out for others. Nothing I say here can convince you to seek help, but I do wish you the best.
Addiction is no excuse. 60′s are over. Crime is no party.
This discussion reminds me of nothing so much as much casting of stones. Am I to believe that there are so many without sin, who have never done anything or held any belief that causes a risk of harm to others in pursuit of their own ends?
To the contary! I think that people have been fairly open about their personal experiences on both sides of the issue.There’s been very little finger pointing, and only a modest amount of “there but for the grace of God..” What I think we are seeing is a group of people who hold people accountable for their actions. Nobody gets a pass for wrong behavior because they were drunk, high, or both.
Most of us have probably done something we regret when under the influence. We may have done something that negatively impact others. Perhaps in a minor way, or even in a major way. I think that lends credibility to the argument.
The consensus seems to be that the author is saying that while under the influence he has probably engaged in rape. And yet he doesn’t want to stop partying and accepts that it could happen again as a consequence. When a person admits that his or her drinking and drugging may injure themselves or others, but they don’t want to stop, you have a clear example of an addict acting out.
Funny you say that, because that’s kind of how I feel about another issue that, uhh, hits close to home for me. See, I’m an inveterate bicyclist. I ride my bike all the time, all sorts of places. And if I can do it, so can most everybody else. But they don’t; they drive their cars.
You know cars– those behemoths of steel, plastic and rubber that go fast enough and build up such momentum that they easily kill pedestrians and bicyclists like me should they happen to cross paths? Of course, since piloting one of these potential-manslaughter machines is fraught with such danger to other people, drivers always pay scrupulous attention to the road, anticipate hazards, and never, ever talk on their cell phone, read text messages, fiddle with the radio, drive when they’re too tired, on drugs, or in any other manner that impairs their ability to drive safely.
Sorry, I couldn’t suppress the sarcasm– Just this past summer a woman my age got splattered across the highway while biking to work, by a teenage driver who’d just worked an overnight shift and drove without sleep. It’s a distressingly routine occurrence. But does it cause anybody to re-think their driving habits? (Everybody thinks they’re an above-average driver, but even the most conscientious driver risks unforeseen situations– the risk is inherent in the activity. That’s why the comparative negligence calculation in tort cases in this state assigns some blame to every driver in a crash just for being present.)
So yeah, I see literally countless examples every day of people who know their actions might injure or kill other people, but judge that risk acceptable due to the benefits (to themselves) of the activity, but don’t want to stop: also a clear example of an addict acting out.
P.S. One might object that the situations are not exactly analogous. I agree. Partying might result in rape, but driving might result in somebody’s death. Dead is worse than raped; if it’s not, let’s institute routine euthanization of rape victims, okay?
um, but driving is slightly more necessary for most people’s day-to-day lives, and/or the functioning of the world in general, than partying…? Of course I know there are many superior alternatives to driving, it’s disgusting how irresponsibly many people drive etc etc, but ‘partying may lead to rape but driving leads to death’ seems a rather ridiculous statement…I mean sure, agreed, but not really sure what your point is?!
I spelled out my intent in making the point in a longer comment elsewhere, but in short, it’s about trying to induce some empathy– it’s funny how you see your actions as reasonable despite the threat to other people’s well-being and how you can justify it because you’re helplessly forced into it. But you’re not. Driving is not necessary. Your lifestyle choices may make it necessary to sustain that lifestyle, but at the end of the day, they are still your choices.
But if I were to be honest, I’d have to admit that partly I made this argument for the lulz. I find it darkly humorous to see people re-purpose the very same arguments that they rightly decry as “rape apologia” to use as “manslaughter apologia.”
Not at all. I am not without sin, but I tend to think that having sinned in similar ways might have given me some experience that could prove useful if the yall’d care to listen.
I was very hesitant to comment on this piece, because to a certain extent I get where Anonymous is coming from. I’m not trying to excuse his behavior, but, well… shit happens. And shit happens a lot more when you do a lot of drugs. ‘Nuff said.
I think the difference between us is largely that I am at a point in my life where I feel remorse and I LEARNED from my experiences. Not immediately, it is true. But eventually I changed my life around for the better.
I can’t tell you what this guy’s potential process of self realization will look like. But as someone who’s walked a similar path and committed more than my fair share of crimes, I can tell you that his attitude is one I’ve seen before in my old peers.
He feels no shame for the danger he presents to other people. It is acceptable to him, and the reason he posted anonymously is because he feels that everyone else isn’t ready to accept him for what he is, rather than that he feels shame for his actions and wants to hide his face. It’s a common reaction among deviants from potheads to pedophiles. It’s not their fault, just no one is as enlightened as them.
That attitude leads to trouble. It has been described (accurately) as sociopathic. In this writer’s case, it’s violently sociopathic. Maybe if he can get out from under the toxic influence of mind altering substances and out of his toxic environment that will change. Unfortunately there is no way to tell and until that point he’s a danger to everyone around him. And he’s cool with it.
Lots of my old junkie and tweaker buddies are the same way. And they’re in the Pen. I sincerely hope that the author can come to some self-realization before that’s where he ends up too, but there’s no guarantee that’ll happen.
At the very least, I hope that it does eventually happen and he can come to some self realization then. To trade years of your life for a wasted lesson is a real shame. More importantly though, to hurt people over and over without any sort of social intervention is a tragedy.
Haven’t commented in a while, mostly due to disgust with the atmosphere but this… This article is pure genius. It hits right to the issue. That grey area. The place Oppression Olympics can’t go. The place gender politics can’t talk about. The place where a rapist is also a rape victim. The place where consent isn’t clearly defined, or even “good,” it’s just a vague feeling which can often be wrong or right, depending on the next morning or even the next minute.
I find it VERY telling that the majority of women condemn this guy without an equal measure of compassion. He’s a victim, after all, as much as anyone else on this site. He’s possibly an addict. I don’t know. I’m not comfortable diagnosing people with disorders since I’m not a doctor or mental health professional. And I think others here should be equally hesitant to diagnose him as well. It’s a dangerous way to excuse his behavior while simultaneously condescending his own victimization and free will.
But back to the point: why is it that the majority of women are condemning this guy? And why are the majority of guys sorry for him? Because, I think, that most guys have been in his position where “good” consent didn’t exist, guys who had sex with another person and weren’t really in the state to make sure the other person wanted it. Or to even find out if they wanted it themselves.
However, nobody talks about this area. Nobody seems to care that victimizers are also victims. Makes it a little harder to hate the rapist who is also a rape victim. Makes it a little harder to push that Black/White Man-Bad/Woman-Good metanarrative that mainstream culture just laps up.
But let me be clear: I wouldn’t want to live this guy’s life. It doesn’t look healthy to me, but he’s making an informed adult choice to suffer the consequences of it. Are we going to say, “no you can’t party anymore because you might get raped or rape someone else.” ??? Because that’s as much victim-blaming as telling women not to dress slutty or drink too much.
Seriously, I find it offensive that so many commenters are ready to tell this guy what he should do with his life to avoid being raped while simultaneously bristling at the mere mention of any person telling women how to minimize their chances of being raped. Why? BECAUSE THE BURDEN IS NOT ON RAPE VICTIMS TO NOT BE RAPED. The burden is not on this guy to stop partying because people might rape him. The grey area comes in again though, does he bear the burden to stop partying so he won’t ever accidentally rape someone again? Yes… and no. Is it rape if the consent is bad but the person later enjoyed it? Is it rape if there was no consent but the person doesn’t care? Is it rape if the person first said stop but then said continue? Yes… and no. Just like it is and is not rape when a person said yes but then changed their mind later. Or when a person said no at first but then said stop in the middle and the other person stopped. Or when both people were drunk and completely forgot having sex with each other, or remember and regret it, or remember and didn’t want it, etc.
But regardless of our feelings, I applaud this man’s courage to speak the truth, even though he has to hide behind anonymity just to let it out. I applaud the offensive, raw honesty of his life. Without regrets. And that’s something I’ll keep in mind when I discuss how to stop rape among men and women.
I cross-posted this over at “Belle Jar”:
http://letterstomycountry.tumblr.com/post/4245885118/comments-on-rape-law-and-the-mens-rea-of-consent
This person has a decent handle on it. Bottom line, any rape statute will harm innocents; the trick is to minimize that harm. With respect to the intersection of drugs, including alcohol, and consent, I think that legislating morality is abhorrent. People are going to have sex while under the influence, some with strangers, others with long-term partners, regardless of statute.
If only sober sex is consensual, then there are a whole lot of rapists running around college campuses, and at least half of them are women. The key is consent, rather than rape statutes.
However, don’t expect “yes means yes” to take hold any time soon. One, a lot of communication is nonverbal. Two, some people are coy about their sexual desire–and that is their choice to make.
We’re not blaming the victim, we’re blaming the perpetrator.
In simple language it boils down to, “I”m having too much fun to want to stop being a potential or actual rapist!”
If he’s doing things that need him or the people around him severly plastered to enjoy, then there’s something pretty wrong going on. Maybe he should look at why those inhibitions are there, and try to move them in a less alcoholic dependant way, rather than simply use alcohol to blitze his brain hard enough he can’t remember what he’s Fucked up.
Screwing up your own life is one thing, willfully putting other people at risk just for fun is beyond dispicable.
Yeah, but your missing the point -
if a totally drunk guy and a totally drunk girl have sex and then later regret it, did they both just rape each other? Who is the victim and who is the perpetrator when both parties consent to losing the ability to consent?
Here’s the thing. This is a person who, by his own admission, would much rather put himself and others at risk of harm than make the relatively minor lifestyle change of drinking less at parties. He’d rather wake up one morning to find out that he has raped, or been raped, or WORSE (because I can think of a lot of Very Nasty Things that can happen to you when you’re drunk, and rape, while horrible, is just the tip of the iceberg), than limit himself to Just One Beer, or have a friend handy to make sure he doesn’t do anything stupid.
There are such things as sober parties. They can be quite fun, if you’re doing them right. (I can’t think of too many parties at which I’ve had more than one drink, or particularly wanted to.) If your parties are so shitty that you have to be completely wasted to have any fun, then there’s your problem right there. If the parties are good anyway, but you’re choosing to get drunk all the time for other reasons, you may have an alcohol dependency problem–and if you do, then you should admit it and do something to break that dependency.
But what the author has chosen here is just ridiculously irresponsible and frankly stupid.
Nobody ever has a reasonable answer to that question.
Don’t be silly! Rape is a black-or-white issue, good vs. evil, and all consent situations are 100% crystal-clear and unambiguous. False accusations never occur, the crime is always one-way (only men rape, remember), and only a rape apologist would acknowledge any complexity in the areas of human social interaction. Even discussing such things is a Crime Against Women.
Because Rape Culture Grrrrr.
Here’s the thing: Yes, there are gray areas. But in general, it’s better to err on the side of “I don’t know if the other person wants it, so I should wait until I get a more clear ‘Yes’ before going any further than this.”
And as a general rule, “This person is intoxicated, and I don’t know this person well enough to know whether or not the answer would be ‘Yes’ under sober conditions, so I should probably wait a few hours and let that whole sobering-up process happen.”
When you don’t know, assume “No.” You may not get laid as often, but at least you won’t have any sex that you might regret having.
“Consensual grey areas” are just another rape myth for people who want to continue on the path of their own hedonism regardless of the harm to others that this creates.
There’s nothing deep or meaningful here. Just another rapist trying to explain his actions away.
If he, or others like him, would take just a few moments while they partied to give some consideration to the wants and needs of others then these issues would disappear. Instead these people choose to pursue their own desires above all else and the people around them become simply ‘part of the experience.’
I’ve seen it myself so many times. Someone is raped at a party. If they don’t brush it under the carpet like everyone else they’re ostrasized by almost their entire friendgroup on the scene. Everyone actively treats rape as an “out of sight, out of mind issue” in these situations because it spoils the fun. And another rapist walks free.
There’s no such thing as “accidental rape” only selfish egotists who never stop to consider that the person they’ve chosen that night might not think they’re god’s gift to sexuality and pleasure. If they cared about whether the other person was enjoying themselves, they’d sincerely ask, and any issues of consent would quickly become apparent.
(None of the following is meant to apply to the anon author, it sounds quite clearly like he is a rapist)
No grey areas? A man n a woman consume 10 drinks, they are both equally drunk (let’s ignore biological differences body to body for this question) and they both enthusiastically have sex yet both aren’t able to walk a straight line. Who is the rapist? To me this is a grey area because they can’t legally consent, they rape each other, but do we charge them both? If they both wakeup the next day and are completely fine with what happened, do we still charge them?
Next grey area is blackout, where someone says yes at the time and is enthusiastic but they aren’t storing memories. Next day they wakeup, can’t remember what happened, was it rape? If they showed zero signs of being unable to consent do we still charge the non-blackout person?
Another grey area. I would like my partner to wake me up with a blowjob one day, technically it’s rape as it would be initiated whilst I am asleep, should she be charged?
Grey areas exist and what can technically be rape can be agreed upon between 2 people, many people have sex when they BOTH legally can’t consent, do we automatically assume they’re rapists who knew it was rape and charge them accordingly or are they different to the rapist who has sex with someone who has passed out or forces them with the victim not being enthusiastic?
I can maybe see accidental rape happening when someone is having drunk sex and the other passes out, the time it takes to pull out or get off of them (1 second?) would that mean they’ve just accidentally raped that person for 1 second + time they didn’t notice they passed out? I think it’d be pretty rare though but I can see the possibility of it happening since consent can be removed during sex itself by the fact that a person may have had a large amount of alcohol just before sex and it takes time to hit the bloodstream for instance. If I have sex with my partner whilst drinking large amounts of alcohol I will cross a threshold where I can’t consent, but if I am the one on top in missionary for instance where it may not be as easy to notice how drunk I am as I am not standing, or speaking much, wouldn’t there be the possibility that if we continue to have sex she is now a rapist if we keep going past the time for the BAC to reach that threshold? Obviously I’d hope she could notice my state has changed and stop but seriously how easy is it to spot when someone is too drunk? Legally I wouldn’t be able to drive but I could probably still walk around n talk so what would be the threshold for impairment of consent?
I am still waiting for answers to these questions because they plague me and make me afraid to have sex even with one drink because I don’t want to have a drunken encounter with someone which may put me at risk of rape, or both of us at risk of rape due to alcohol impairment. I have ZERO desire to rape someone, I want someone 100% responsive and enthusiastic which is another reason why I am afraid to have sex after we’ve had alcohol. Is one drink ok? 2? I’ve had 3-4 drinks before and feel like I could consent willingly and have good ability to consent but does that legally put the other at risk?
I don’t think rape is as black n white as many wish it to be. Sure it’s great to think rape is always the rapist wanting to rape but what if alcohol is severely impairing the judgment of people and they’re raping each other? They probably never want to rape someone, and may both think the other is consenting as they could be enthusiastically all over each other but legally they may be past the threshold.
I think rape is terrible but I think there is grey area rape, or at least situations that I have described which I haven’t been informed properly on if they are rape or not. This isn’t meant to excuse the actions of rapists but I am trying to figure out how people can get so drunk, have sex, and when that is rape. My understanding is that there a millions of men n women who have drunken sex and are raping each other by the law’s definition of impairment to mental state from alcohol.
I’d love to hear from someone clued up on Australian law on this matter.
First example wasn’t rape as you stated that they both enthusiastically went for it and were clearly fine with their sexual encounter. This is what I mean by communication. In this example you have already implied that both parties made it very clear they wanted to have sex. Hence, not rape. Also, questions of legally don’t really factor into this as it just confuses the point. For example, not all countries deem inebriated persons as unable to consent, and assuming hetero norms, many countries do not extend the definition of rape to include males.
Second example, if someone is blackout level drunk, they will never appear totally sober. i.e showing ZERO signs of being unable to consent. This is because alcohol is a poison that affects your brain chemistry and therefore it is not possible to show ZERO signs of inebriation unless somehow you are immune to alcohol, in which case you would not be able to get blackout drunk. Any reasonable person would see signs of severe inebriation, even when drunk, and think “I want to make sure this person is definitively able to consent to my sexual advances but I can’t do that right now. I’ll give them my contact details instead and they’ll get in touch later at a more appropriate time if they’re really interested.”
Third, if you’ve given prior consent for such action because you’ve DISCUSSED it with your partner it is obviously not rape.
Fourth, the one second thing… seriously? Don’t be ridiculous. The act of pulling out once you’ve realised consent has obviously been withdrawn due to their unconsciousness (and why were they having sex with someone that drunk anyways?) means you are consciously taking steps to avoid rape, not becoming accidental one-second-rapist. What would make you a rapist in this scenario would be not being attentive enough of your sexual partner to realise they were so drunk they were going to pass out during intercourse.
The rest of your response is totally the right answer by the way:
“I want someone 100% responsive and enthusiastic which is another reason why I am afraid to have sex after we’ve had alcohol. Is one drink ok? 2? I’ve had 3-4 drinks before and feel like I could consent willingly and have good ability to consent but does that legally put the other at risk?”
This is exactly the right way to be thinking. This is what I mean by no grey areas. You are the type of person that is attentive and considerate to the needs and wants of your sexual partners. It’s people NOT asking these questions that is the very problem. The people that DON’T ask these questions when they engage in sexual activity are the ones who are less likely to care about who they have sex with and what state that person is in.
By taking the time to care, you find ways to avoid the entire situation. It’s the people who are too selfish and hedonistic to care that find themselves in the scenarios you’ve mentioned. They say: “I want sex and there is someone I wouldn’t mind having sex with” and rather than communicating what they want and asking the other person what they want and making sure that person is totally fine with the scenario and obviously able to consent, they just plough forward with their sexual desire and just assume consent. This is why it’s not “accidental rape,” but rather “I didn’t care enough to consider the possibility that I am raping this person.”
By taking the time to care, you find ways to avoid the entire situation. It’s the people who are too selfish and hedonistic to care that find themselves in the scenarios you’ve mentioned. They say: “I want sex and there is someone I wouldn’t mind having sex with” and rather than communicating what they want and asking the other person what they want and making sure that person is totally fine with the scenario and obviously able to consent, they just plough forward with their sexual desire and just assume consent. This is why it’s not “accidental rape,” but rather “I didn’t care enough to consider the possibility that I am raping this person.”
Read more at http://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/id-rather-risk-rape-than-quit-partying/#JlexUFJM19QxgVms.99
I’m going to call you out on this, you personally don’t want to have sex with someone who hasn’t been drinking, I personally am the same way, but I know a lot of people, men and women who love drunk or high sex. This is emoting one set personal preferences onto another person’s personal preferences. I also very strongly feel that it is taking away agency from a person and taking away their personal responsibility for their actions. I’m not talking about when a person passed out and someone forces themselves on him or her, or when a person is comatose and someone forces themselves on him or her, or a person is threatened by someone either by violence or coercion. I’m talking about when a person ‘lets themselves go’ and engages in risky behavior.
If I am drunk and I give someone $50, I can’t say “I was drunk when I gave him that money so he stole it from me.”
If I am drunk and I break a window I can’t say “I was drunk, I can’t be held accountable for deciding to break a window.”
If I am drunk and I drive a car I can’t say “I’m too drunk to be held accountable for deciding to get into the car and drive.”
So how can, if I’m expected to be held accountable for my actions for all these other things when I am drunk, how can I, assuming the other person didn’t purposely give me alcohol or drugs against my will or violently force him or herself on me, get away with saying “I’m too drunk to be held accountable for deciding to have sex with that person, and so that person raped me?”
Maybe this way of looking at things makes me a “rape apologist,” and the more I hear that phrase, the more I think it’s a nasty label that gets thrown around to avoid actually facing this conversation. Let me reiterate that I’m NOT talking about someone violently forcing someone against their will, I’m NOT talking about someone using coercion, I’m NOT talking about having sex with someone who is passed out, I’m NOT talking about someone who is so drunk they have no motor function, and I’m NOT talking about “blaming the victim,” or saying that someone “asked” for it because they were drinking, I’m talking about how and when does someone who seems to be able to give consent “lose the ability to give consent” and not be held accountable for their actions and decisions when if they had gone and done something else stupid while drunk we would still hold him or her accountable? You want to hold the author accountable for forcing a woman to a “rough third base” because he was drunk why can’t we want to hold another person accountable for consenting while he or she was inebriated?
But what if a person genuinely DIDN’T consent? Remember, people’s reflexes are slower when they’re inebriated, too. They are less likely to be able to fight someone off if they don’t want sex.
“But officer, it doesn’t count that I took her wallet, because she was drunk and didn’t stop me from reaching into her pocket!” doesn’t work as a defense against theft, does it?
We’re not talking about people who decide to have sex when they are drunk and later regret it. Those people generally have the decency to admit that they made a bad decision when they were drunk, and DON’T try to pretend that they were raped. False rape accusations of that sort are a lot more rare than many of us would like to believe.
We are talking about people who were either unconscious, or who did NOT want sex but were too drunk to be able to fight off an attacker. If that is somehow not rape to you, I’m rather curious as to what your definition of “rape” entails.
False rape accusations are at what, 2-10%? That’s statistically significant for every person to worry about when having sex, will he/she falsely accuse me of rape? 1 in 50 to 1 in 10 chance of a rape accusation being falsely used. If it was 0.001% then sure it wouldn’t really be a large fear but 2-10% is pretty significant. The gall of some people to try act like false accusations are not a significant threat is fucking pathetic, even at 1% they would be so common to cause serious concern. But maybe I am different in not liking 1 in 100 people dragged to court or even tainted by an accusation from false pretenses.
We need to both treat real rape seriously but also treat false accusations seriously, they’re both a very real fear for people regardless of how common they occur. I myself both fear being raped and falsely accused of rape, it’s in the back of my mind and makes me try my best to pick a sexual partner who is trustworthy and won’t use rape accusation as a weapon nor someone who will rape me. After seeing what happens in the Duke Lacross team case it’s pretty clear what happens when it hits the media. FRA’s may be rare but so is being bitten by a snake, but I still walk fucking carefully near long grass. Hell I hate being outside in storms yet FRA’s are probably far more common than lightning strikes.
That said how does anyone prove the third base victim consented or didn’t? If she was trying to push him away, sure it’s rape. If she wasn’t enthusiastic, sure it was most likely rape, but if she consented whilst blacked out then what happens? It becomes a he said, she said and at the very least the author needs to stop having sex when so drunk, or with people who are so drunk but the chances are he raped her. She sounds like she remembered the event so I don’t think she blacked out, so there is no need to hold her accountable for consenting because she didn’t consent which makes him a rapist. I may have overlooked any facts, brain is all studied out and is on mush for the holidays so take this with a grain of salt.
A 2-10% false rape accusation statistic does NOT mean that EVERY TIME YOU HAVE SEX there’s a 1 in 50 or 1 in 10 chance of a rape accusation being falsely used. You do understand that right? That would only work if you got accused of rape every time you had sex…
Yes I understand that. What sticks in my mind is if she is the one who will lie about abuse when scorned. She may be a great partner, or she may be an abusive person who’ll use rape, or the threat of falsely accusing rape for whatever reason. There was a comment on here from a guy who had a woman say she’d claim rape if he didn’t have sex with her, and she raped him.
Most likely a partner will not try to claim rape at all, or falsely accuse but it does happen and just as people are afraid to walk the streets alone, see snakes and other things that can cause harm this is something that does bother some men. I’ve known people who I wouldn’t put that type of action past them, people who want to hurt others via whatever means necessary. Yes they’re far rarer than rape victims but it’s still something to worry about, just like I have the fear of crashing in the back of my mind when driving.
Thank-you for the answer! The part that really scared me was of the blackout drunk, what I was afraid could happen is they appeared at most tipsy but I really do hope blackout level drunk is visible and you know they aren’t ok vs tipsy where you both are tipsy, enthusiastically have sex and everything is ok as in the first example. My biggest fear would be not noticing they are more drunk, if for some reason they aren’t stumbling drunk but appear tipsy yet mentally they can’t consent at all and I am under the impression we’re both tipsy and just having consenting sex. So I realllllly hope blackout and anything like that never occurs when a person is visibly less drunk than they are!
I am that nervous about consent that I ask often, I’ve heard it’s unromantic to ask every step of the way (do you wanna kiss, do you wanna do this, do that) but until I can be more certain of consent I’ll continue to do so for each little bit vs less often but at least once per encounter or whatever is necessary to ensure consent.
Frankly, it depends on how you ask.
“May I insert my penis into your vaginal cavity?” is very unsexy. “Want me to get the condoms?” can be very sexy indeed.
Thanks
As much as I wish I could agree that “Consensual grey areas” are just a myth, I can’t. I understand where you’re coming from, and where the majority of other commentators are coming from, and I understand that for you this is coming from your experience. My own experience is the reason I have a hard time accepting that there is no such thing as “Consensual grey areas.”
During my very early brushes with gender equality issues I got into a discussion about consent with a friend. During our discussion she asserted “Everyone loves a little drunk sex” and then a short while later said “you can’t consent if you’re drunk and saying that as your defense is ‘victim blaming.’” I asked her to explain these conflicting statements and our discussion dissolved into words like “mansplaning” and “male privilege,” etc; I never got my question answered.
Now, I understand that this and following examples I’m going to give are anecdotal and not based on data or provide any definitive measurement of “proof” for “consensual gray areas,” and we should always be careful to check for false-consensus bias when referring to our own experience, what they do illustrate is that things are not always black and white.
Have you ever seen someone who is blackout drunk? They can, while not always, look and act as though they are awake, complete complicated tasks like dancing, playing drinking games, carry on conversations, and yes even participate in sex. I know because I’ve seen it personally and because being in a fraternity in college we had to attend risk management and alcohol awareness seminars on a yearly basis. I myself have had girls who anyone watching would have said that they were “consenting,” rubbing up on me, touching me, grinding on me, who I found out later were actually blacked out and I silently thanked myself for staying sober and following my rule of never having sex with someone who’s been drinking. If it’s hard for a sober person to tell when someone is past the point of consent, what about for someone who has also been drinking.
I’m not talking about jumping on someone or forcing yourself into someone who is passed out or sleeping (which is very different from being just drunk or blacked out,) or holding a knife to someone.
What I think is terrifying is that the message I keep seeing passed around is “If someone says that they were raped then they were raped” and “If someone says you raped them then you probably raped them.” This scares me because along with this I have noticed a tendency (again, beware potential consensus bias) for certain voices that tell people how they should reflect on their experiences.
I have a friend who asserts that she was sexually assaulted by her last boyfriend. She had previously told him what she felt her boundaries were and he agreed. This friend also had a history of sleepwalking, and had not told her boyfriend. It was dark, she was stressed out, they were sleeping in the same bed, and she (she says in her sleep) initiated intimate activity. Her boyfriend didn’t know she was asleep and thought she had decided to re-define her boundaries, and when she woke up in the middle of it she understandably freaked out and started blaming him for breaking her trust, and broke up with him the next day. Now I completely understand why she would feel freaked out and weird and she has the right to decide that she doesn’t want to be with him or trust him, and where I have the problem is that now, a year later, it has turned into “he sexually assaulted me.”
I have another friend and about three years ago she was dating a guy with whom she lost her virginity. The way she originally told the story after they broke up was that she originally told him she didn’t want to have sex and that he was pushy, but not abusive, and eventually she finally agreed to ‘get it over with.’ Is that a bad reason to have sex? Sure, I could see that. Was it less than enthusiastic sex? Yes. Now after some time spent with an on-campus feminist group she now says that she was raped by coercion. The guy never threatened her, he never talked her down or attacked her ego for not wanting to have sex, and he didn’t pull the “if you loved me you would sleep with me” guilt trip, what he did was frequently bring up the desire to have sex with her and openly expressed that he was bummed she didn’t want to.
Was either of my friends really sexually abused or raped? Some people would say my first friend was sexually abused and put the onus on her boyfriend for not making sure that she was actually awake when she got on top of him and started initiating in the middle of the night. Some people would say that my other friend was raped because she only said yes because she “felt pushed into it.” I love my friends, I feel for the hurt and anxiety they’ve gone through, and I’m still going to call shenanigans on them and this new trend that tries to tell people how they should evaluate their experiences when they previously did not evaluate them in that way. Were they both in crummy situations and do they have a right to be upset or hurt, yes they do, but to go around claiming “rape victim” because someone else stuck the idea that they are a victim into their heads, say that the guys in these situations in rapists just because “the girl said so,” or insist that there is no such thing as a grey involving consent is plain wrong.
Exactly. Very lucid points. Thank you.
Bullshit.
Pardon my French, but the above is just another example of proscriptive political correctness, which is designed to shut down discussion by shaming anybody who’d dare hold a different view. Myriad consensual grey areas pop to mind instantly when I think about it:
#1) White: Two 21-year-olds have enthusiastic, consensual sex. Black: Two 12-year-olds have an enthusiastic, consensual sexual encounter. (They might have wanted to do it, but they’re too young and their brains haven’t developed the ability to properly weigh long-term consequences.)
Grey: Two 16-year-olds have enthusiastic, consensual sex. Do they have the maturity to consent in an adult, informed capacity? Who can say for sure?
#2) I have a friend who cared for a mentally-disabled man for many years. He had the intellectual and emotional maturity of a 12-year-old, yet he had a fully adult sex drive. If he enthusiastic, consensual sex with a woman, would she be a rapist because he couldn’t meaningfully consent? What if she were also mentally-disabled?
#3) This happened: Years ago, a friend invited me over to her apartment to hang out as she was on the outs with her boyfriend and needed some company. We watched a movie, and she started putting the moves on me. It made me terribly uncomfortable because the voice in the back of my mind was saying, “No!” I was inexperienced and nervous, not so much in the mood, and she was not my type. But plenty of other voices influenced me, the ones from our culture which say: “A real man is always ready for sex.” And, “Sexual attractiveness to women is a measure of a man’s value.” And, “A woman’s sexuality is a gift she bestows upon (unworthy) men.” Yeah, I was young and stupid, so I followed her lead and we ended up having (awkward, fumbling, unprotected) sex. I felt queasy about the whole thing, and quickly lost touch with her. Did she rape me? I say no. I could’ve stopped it at any time without repercussions. The coercion came from cultural sources, not from her. But other people will certainly say yes.
#4) This also happened: Another friend told me that her first time, she didn’t want to have sex. She really liked her boyfriend and he was a perfect gentleman who always took “no” for an answer, but he wanted to have sex. She was afraid that if she kept refusing that he would dump her for somebody who did want to have sex, so eventually she said “yes.” Is that truly consent?
(What if, hypothetically, he had pressured her by complaining about not having sex? If he had threatened to dump her if she wouldn’t have sex with him?)
There ya go, at least four consensual grey areas. Please don’t tell me they don’t exist.
Some of the commenters here seem to be conflating two different issues (not everything is either black or white, but not all shades of grey are the same): one is someone who would want to hook up, but when they’re sober they don’t because they’re too inhibited (or because of social norms against doing that when sober), so they decide to drink a couple drinks to overcome their inhibitions (or so that they will be excused for breaking said social norms) while staying able to say No if they really want to, and the next morning they will remember everything; another is someone who for whatever reason drinks more than they had planned or than they can handle, passes out, is taken advantage of, and the next morning they will remember nothing. While there’s a large grey area between the two, it’s clear to me that the latter should be labelled “rape” and had better be eradicated from the face of the earth as soon as possible, whereas the former… well, it wouldn’t be necessary in an ideal world, but in this world where sexuophobic social norms and people with inhibitions do exist it’s an acceptable workaround.
You’re missing a third: someone who doesn’t pass out but also doesn’t remember anything the next morning. That’s the difference between “blackout drunk” and “passed-out drunk.”
50 yr old Dads are still passing out, blacking out, and causing havoc in their lives. Alcoholism is symptom of bigger picture in abuse. Why is this writer abusing himself with alcohol? Why is buzz of addiction preferable to consciousness? Was writer hurt at earlier date, breaking down conscience? He’s a good writer. Perhaps writing will continue to work for him.
That’s in the grey area, but it’s a very dark, nearly black shade of grey, because the threshold above which I won’t remember anything the next morning is usually higher than the threshold above which it’s obvious to other people that I can’t think straight even if I wanted to and so my ‘consent’ isn’t valid. But if I said Yes and remember saying that, I think I don’t get to say I was raped no matter how much I had drunk (so long as I had decided to drink on my own accord): if I know that if I drink too much I might have sex with someone with whom I otherwise wouldn’t, and I still drink around them…
I have a hard time setting the bar at “and remember saying that,” because if the measure for whether or not someone who is drunk or high is responsible for his or her actions stops at blackout, then we should also stop holding people who are blackout drunk accountable when they break someone else’s property, get in a car and drive, do something stupid that gets one of their friends killed, or decide that the person passed out with the door to his or her dorm open is an acceptable sexual partner.
If someone is unable to stand on their own, semi-comatose, beyond the point where you they can speak, or passed out, well then yes they’ve reached the point where they can no longer consent. If someone’s together enough in their blacked out stupor to say “Yes let’s do it” or to climb up on top of the other person, and then mid-way through they come out of the fog or wake up the next morning vaguely remembering the act and not giving consent, sorry, no they weren’t raped. If they’re able to decide to drink and they’re still actively making a decision to participate, albeit probably a poor decision, and we expect them to be responsible any other stupid decision they could have made that night, then I expect them to take responsibility here too and not start running around crying ‘rape;’ obviously this does not apply if they were forced to take the drugs or alcohol against their own free will.
As an aside, it’s amazing what people can do while blacked out; yes it’s pretty clear that they’re drunk, but you can’t necessarily distinguish when someone is just really drunk and blacked out people will drive, play video games, have sex, run around, and otherwise act like they’re just really drunk. This is because the person isn’t unconscious while they are blacked out; it’s that their brain is no longer storing memories. Black outs usually do end with the person passing out, but I’ve also had friends who come out of the daze never having fallen asleep, they just suddenly go “Wait, how did we get here?” and they can’t remember where they were or what they did for the previous two hours.
“…the threshold above which I won’t remember anything the next morning is usually higher than the threshold above which it’s obvious to other people that I can’t think straight even if I wanted to and so my ‘consent’ isn’t valid.”
Obvious to sober people, maybe (and even then, they must know what drunk people look like). But people rarely get passed out drunk in a group of sober people. They do it amongst other people who are drunk, with their judgment impaired. To a sober person, a passed out drunk person may look way passed out, to a person who is drunk, that person may look just drunk like them and not passed out. You can’t reasonably expect them to be able to tell the difference and then call them “rapists” if they don’t.
Quite frankly, I’ve had a friend who was passed out drunk who got home in his car after a party. He got there safely, fortunately, and when sober he knew that was completely stupid and illegal. But if he had been arrested while going there, should he have been able to defend himself by saying “I was so drunk I don’t remember anything”? No. He shouldn’t. He chose to impair his judgment that much and made a bad decision, and he would own that decision nonetheless.
Similarly, if someone gets so drunk that they are in an altered state and in that altered state they enthusiastically have sex with other people, they don’t get to cry rape. They made the decision to impair their judgment, and while their judgment was impaired they made a decision to have sex with someone they would otherwise not have had it with, they OWN that decision. It’s not rape. If someone is passed out drunk and fucks a sleeping woman, they are committing rape, saying that they “don’t remember” isn’t a defense. Likewise, if you’re passed out drunk and you choose to have sex with someone, you don’t get to retroactively describe this as rape because you “don’t remember”.
I know that in some places the law says otherwise, but those laws are wrong, I mean it’s so stupid that if two passed out drunk people have sex, then by that definition both have raped the other. How does that work?
Now, I don’t get this drunk and I wouldn’t have sex with someone who was visibly very drunk and whose only reason for wanting to have sex with me was their drunken state (and how sad would that be for me, really?). I don’t take drugs and stay away from that whole scene, so I am not impacted directly by all of this. I’d suggest to people to avoid that situation entirely, but if it still happens, then I don’t recognize it as rape, the same way I don’t absolve people who crashed their cars while drunken driving.
I think in many of these cases you’re referring to Blacked out drunk, not “Passed out” drunk. If someone is passed out it means they are unconscious, i.e. sleeping. Someone who is “passed out” cannot get into a car and drive (although someone could get into a car while drunk and “pass out” while driving, but that means they fall into a state of unconsciousness.) Black out drunk is where someone is still conscious, and their brains stops recording memories, so they do not remember all or part of what they were doing during that time.
A “passed out” drunk cannot consent because they are asleep, a “black out” drunk could consent at the time and not remember it the following morning. The only way a “passed out” drunk could be convicted for drunk driving is if he or she had gotten into the vehicle and were already drunk before they passed out.
Not forgivable, not acceptable, not a gray area at all. I would be the last person to argue that sex-while-drunk = rape, but this is not a case of people who made bad choices while drinking, or of an honest miscommunication. He tries to frame it that way, but his conclusion proves that it isn’t so.
Making a mistake is one thing. Recognizing that under certain circumstances you won’t be able to control yourself and are likely to harm others, and continuing to put yourself in those circumstances, is not making a mistake, it is exactly the same as – it IS – harming them deliberately. If you know you’re likely to drive while drunk, or to beat someone up, it’s your responsibility to make sure that *can’t possibly happen* before you have so much of a sip of beer. Same with this.
Agree. Writer is reaching out to end denial and fear. Aids is lifetime sentence.
Value health or lose it. Are you raping yourself?
Walks like a duck. Sounds like he wants to change, as he is aware of addiction to artificial world of sleeze.
“I’d rather risk murder than quit drunk-driving”
Not lettin’ you get away with that. It’s just as valid if I change it to:
“I’d rather risk murder than hang up my cell phone while driving.”
Or:
“I’d rather risk murder than to get enough sleep before driving.”
Or:
“I’d rather risk murder than slow down in a school zone because I’m running late.”
Or even:
“I’d rather risk murder than walk or bike to my destination.”
All of these are distressingly common, and all are distressingly acceptable socially. So if it’s not the risk imposed on other people that makes partying “bad,” what is it?
Being socially acceptable doesn’t make them right.
I don’t see how your examples refute the point at all.
A fascinating argument. How do you define “right” as distinct from “socially-acceptable,” and if you do, then how is “right” relevant in any way to the real world?
That said, my argument is not to defend the author, but to point out that the commenters damning the author have in all likelihood done things objectively worse. Beams and motes, and all that.
If you know you’ll rape people when you’re drunk and you drink with them anyway, it’s exactly the same as if you raped them sober. In fact, the alcohol is probably just an excuse.
This guy slammed a girl up against the wall and shoved his dick into her and he thinks somehow this is the same as having sex with someone when he was blacked out drunk. People consent to sex while being blacked out drunk. But this guy apparently can’t handle getting high without assaulting people, and needs to sober up or be incarcerated.
Beth, everyone here is pretty clear that the incident you are referring to was outright wrong with no gray area attached. It was clearly violent and the girl was not given a chance to consent and did not want it at the time.
The comments regarding the blacked out drunk started, I believe, in response to his question as to whether or not he had been raped. The discussion then continued to further ask “when does someone lose the ability to provide consent while drinking?” It is an important point of discussion because there is a strong stream of thought (this may be consensus bias thanks to the social circles I hang out in and not the larger view by society), that if someone is drunk then they cannot consent, which makes having sex with that someone rape even if they said they wanted it at the time. The problem with this view is that rape usually discussed in black and white terms, and these people state that if someone consents while they are blackout drunk they can’t really consent, so that means that having sex with someone who is blacked out counts as rape, and if anyone says “well she had been drinking so she’s responsible for her actions” they’re told that they are “victim blaming.” People who hold this view make no distinction between someone who is still conscious while drinking and someone who is passed out or incapacitated and psychically incapable of responding; they believe that both cases count as rape.
KC, yes, I get that, and the author of this article is hiding behind that logic to pretend that he thinks he’s been raped. Which I do not buy, He does not feel violated he is full of shit. Regardless, I entirely don’t agree that it is up to other people to judge whether or not I’m too drunk to consent. I’m responsible for my own behavior. If I drink too much and make bad decisions that later I don’t remember, that’s on me. If I’m passed out, that’s another issue, You literally can not give consent when not awake.
I think that questioning whether somebody has really been raped in a froum is crossing some sort of line no? Agree with the guy or not you take every bad thing he says at face value, then doubt his vulnerabilities?
This is why we need to hear the words of ALL people. You hear him admit to being a rapist and want him to be a 2 dimensional bogie man who you can spew bile at and point to as a stereotype. Hate him by all means, but accept that, like all of us, he has other depths and some of these are worthy of empathy.
I believe the whole point of publishing this was to help us understand how “normal” people end up doing bad things. You have to get over the fact you don’t like him and read the whole of what he has to say. It is obvious he judges himself (maybe not as harshly as some wish he did) and your further condemnation does nothing to further the debate, it only sets it back to square one.
If we were to publish an article in which a woman who perform FGM discussed how she was raped, where would you stand then? Is the evil she does enough to diminish her rape too?
Martin, thats one of the best post I have seen here in this topic. Kudos.
“This guy slammed a girl up against the wall and shoved his dick into her [...]”
Hmm, you didn’t actually read the article, did you?
@Jonathan G, Excuse you, quoting from the article. ” I pressed her up against a wall and… well.” Afterwards, she called it rape. So yes, that’s exactly what happened.
“Pressed” is not “slammed” and “third-base” is not “shoved his dick into her.” The denotation and connotation are different in each case.
When I was growing up, “third base” involved someone’s hand touching someone else’s genitals. I hear the kids these days refer to oral as third base (but I don’t know if that’s true).
I can imagine an interpretation of what the author wrote as being he pressed her against the wall (restricting her movements) and put his hand in her pants (skirt, etc). I can see how she might say that was “rape” since he forcefully did something to her without her consent.
Traditionally, from a legal perspective, we would consider that sexual assault rather than rape. As this article has illustrated, there is no general consensus on what does and does not constitute consent, let alone rape, and we appear to be no closer at forming one.
“Here’s the plain, awful fact: people can have more and better sex drunk than they can sober. : That’s called Doing It Wrong.
Very wrong. I have had sex under the influence of alcohol exactly once. It wasn’t nearly as good, because I couldn’t be nearly as inventive.
I could probably have better sex when tipsy as it would be enough to mellow out my insecurities, being drunk though would make it difficult to perform.
Why is he so afraid to post his name to this piece? If he’s admitting to partaking in such meaningless actions, why not be man enough to put a name to this public article?
Hey Guy, just so you know – as long as you’re okay with raping, I’m totally okay with your victim murdering your dumb ass. As a woman, I carry a knife for self-defense at all times because of ignorant, selfish, psychotic idiots like you. One of these days you’re going to run into a girl like me who is perfectly fine driving home the meaning of the word “No” with the sharp end of her hunting knife.
Ladies, stop trying to reason with idiots. Be willing to defend yourself by any means necessary – that’s pretty much the only way they’re going to learn.
I suggest making sure you learn how to use it, as often weapons the victim had can be used against them. You don’t want to be bringing them more power of course. Krav Maga from what I’ve seen is a pretty decent form of self-defense and could help out but I fear that in this situation the victim is most likely so drunk she or he cannot fight back
I guess I’m just wondering how those he parties with feel about his views on rape is a part of life. If he disclosed this view, how would that affect his ability to party? It all seems very cowardly, if you’re going to say you have this right what about the others around you. You are a danger to others.
I’m gonna keep harping on this point: Nobody driving their cars around asks me how I feel about the danger of violent death being part of life when I’m riding my bicycle. Yet I’ve seen enough “good drivers” do things that make it a very, very real possibility.
Is the @anonymous for real? Can it be that this gut bucket has made no replies?
Sex is about kissing and being kissed, licking and being licked and so on. If you can’t figure that out when your “partner” “fails” to kiss or lick you back, then, man, you’ve got no idea about what sex is.
If you think that sex is that little high you get all alone in your bathroom reading magazines with pretty pictures in them, then go ahead and do it without using other people’s bodies – you can’t appreciate the difference.
I’m sick and tired of ignorant pathetic j*rks like you. Women deserve better than a quick pin against the wall, even if consensual (I find hard to believe that last bit).
So go home alone to do what you enjoy best, and leave the women to men who can and do appreciate them.
This is all very well and I respect the honesty of the guy posting it however he is clearly confusing two situations here. Firstly is first paragraph about him raping the girl at the party was clearly rape and him reffering to it as “harsh third base” is massively offensive.
He then seems to compare this situation with situations that are not rape at all. he talks about a girl who drank two glasses of wine which mixed with her medication that she consentual drank then was throwing herself over a guy… if she had never made it obvious she had no idea who he was if the two then did have sex that is not rape. Sex you are agreeing too even if you are doing so from an intoxicated state you got yourself in by knowingly drinking a substance (it would be different if you did not know you were ingesting the substance) is not rape. His suggestion that he is a rape survivor because he has had sexual encounters he later regretted or can not remember is offensive to real rape survivors.
The fact he dosn’t recognise the first incident as rape despite the obvious force in the situation is scary.
The problem is it depends on who you talk to. There was an article linked here that “described Rape Culture” earlier that would argue that sleeping with someone who is drunk IS in fact rape, and if they had it their way sleeping with someone who is drunk (not passed out, not forceful, but two people actively engaging in sex while one of them is drunk) would be considered rape. As for the author’s assertion that he is a rape victim, he doesn’t say he regrets the encounters, rather he says that he doesn’t remember them: Was he unconscious and passed out when the girl approached him? Then yes, he was raped. Did the girl slip something into his drink? Then yes, he was raped. Was he conscious and just doesn’t remember because he was black-out drunk? For the people who assert that a girl who was conscious, drunk, and consenting, and does not remember consenting the next morning was raped, then yes, he was raped.*
* Well actually he wasn’t raped because according to the formal definition used for statistics by the FBI a man can’t be raped by a woman’s genitals, even though when the general public hears the word “rape” they think “forced sexual encounter.”
Dear Sir: I doubt you’ll take this advice until you hit some sort of rock bottom or your friends and family call you out on it. Your behavior is extremely dangerous, reckless, and self destructive (not to mention destructive to others as you are aware that you engage in rape). You’re likely to end up in jail, in a car crash, father to an unplanned child, a crapped out liver, or with a dangerous STD as it is clear that you frequently drink to the point that your judgement fails you and you have blackouts. IF your name becomes associated with this piece, it is extremely likely that your career will be in jeopardy – in short, you could lose your job (or clients if you are self employed) and not find a new one if Google searches associate you to this essay. PLEASE consider seeing a therapist and getting some help – but I doubt you’ll do that, because you don’t seem to recognize yet that you have a problem. Based on the title of this piece, you almost seem proud of this behavior.
Unlike others who are being very critical of the GMP for running this series, I am glad that they published it. These topics are taboo and a thoughtful discussion is truely needed.
So you’re a guy, you’re out partying with a bunch of other guys, and you all get really drunk, and you’re all laughing and horsing around and slapping each other on the back, and you and another guy walk out to his truck to grab another bottle of booze. and this guy (he outweighs you by 50 pounds) knocks you to the ground, pins you down, pulls you pants down and shoves his penis up your butt – but hey, you were coming on to him, right? You were laughing and drinking – you even touched him. Obviously you wanted it. Did you like it? Was it painful and humiliating and scary? Oh gee – it’s different when it’s male-on-male? IT’S RAPE.
That’s a cut-and-dried case of violent rape, no matter what combination of genders.
What relevance does your story have to this article at all?
I haven’t been able to read all of the comments here, but I would like to give another perspective. I college, I was an extremely hard partier. I drank too much, and passed out all of the time. I regret some of the things that I said and did while under the influence, but, like the author of this piece, I was having too much fun to stop.
Here’s the difference between the author and I: If I had ever done anything that I found out later had hurt someone, I don’t think I could have continued with that lifestyle. I can’t imagine the guilt I would feel had I pushed someone into doing something they didn’t want to do. That would have stopped my partying in its tracks – because NO lifestyle is worth the possibility of hurting other people.
On another note, I was drunk many times, and I had many encounters. Still with that, I managed to keep my virginity until I deemed it was time for it to go (I was sober, by the way). I said no so many times with the guys that I was with that it became a running joke in my circle of friends. In fact, they started betting on who it would be that I would finally say yes to. There were no bad feelings, no fights, no regrets – no matter how drunk anyone was, no meant no, and that was it. There were no gray areas. Maybe I was lucky, and I fell into a group of people who were brought up right, but that was the way it was. In fact, I remember the only time I actually wanted to spend the night with a friend, he gently turned me down, saying that we would both regret it in the morning. We had both been drinking rather heavily, yet he was able to do the right thing. This is what happens when people actually stop and think about each other and the consequences of their actions. Rape is rape – and if you get so drunk that you routinely don’t remember the people you hurt, and when you sober up you don’t really care, YOU HAVE A PROBLEM.