I haven’t read the story but in general, getting into a car when you’re too drunk to remember IS NOT THE SAME as getting raped when you’re drunk. It’s far more analogous to the person who actually did the raping… because they are choosing to do something illegal even if they can’t remember.
But @romanigypsyeyes, there is nothing suggesting that the guy did anything wrong here. It’s not even a matter of “he said, she said”. It is actually"He said, she doesn’t remember."
You should read the story before commenting on it. What struck me was that there was corroborating accounts from several people that she seemed to be consenting to everything, that she encountered a police officer after the alleged rape and didn’t think to mention that she had been assaulted, and that she admits she cannot remember anything of what happened. Yet she is absolutely convinced that she was raped because she felt wrong the next day. Who would feel good after nearly poisoning themselves to death, and then being so comatose that they peed all over themselves in bed. Usually she feels good after a night like that?
FYI there is another thread on this going on.
@Pizzagirl could you link to the other thread?
People continue to have trouble with the idea of consent, ala joblue’s comparison of being raped while drunk to driving while drunk. Here is a funny video on on consent that is making the rounds. It compares consent to a cup of tea to consent to sex. It is being used in student education on several campuses. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=oQbei5JGiT8
Am on phone so can’t link, but the UVA case is being discussed in the Parent Cafe, thread title How UVA handled a sexual assault case (or something like that).
Here’s a link to the other thread: http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parent-cafe/1905325-how-uva-handled-another-sexual-assault-case.html#latest. The tea video is a great educational tool but has its limits. It’s especially good to illustrate that consenting once doesn’t mean a blanket consent in the future. But real life is messy and complicated. Read the facts of the newest case. What if in the tea video a person consented to tea, then later can’t remember consenting due to the effects of alcohol? Does that retroactively make the consent invalid?
Despite posting the link to the tea consent video, I decided that consent was a concept that only benefitted people who had good choices about 10 years ago; one might think of it it’s a white/man concept. I was one of the few middle class mothers working in Singapore without a maid. This meant that I spent time with the Fillipina maids picking up kids, attending soft ball games, etc. After a few months we started to have conversations about choosing between being a maid for decades (5x4 room, 6-7 days/week, 24 hours/day) and being a mail order bride. The women I was speaking with had good English, even college degrees. They lived hard lives and consented to difficult conditions. They felt deep (haunting) responsibility for the adequacy of their choices despite their limited option.
Trafficking means the victim has no choice, doesn’t consent, but what if the choice is among hunger, basically indentured servitude, or mail order bride? What if it’s between prostitution or hunger, but what if consenting to prostitution means slavery (perhaps by forced addiction)? What does this idea of consent mean? Then I thought about female genital circumcision. What if the choice requires consenting to brutal cutting or not being marriageable? In the refugee camps, 65 million refugees, young girls are married off as a way of feeding them, protecting them from rape. What kind of (familial) consent is this?
This meditation on consent perhaps is off topic, but I do find the idea of consent as a new gold standard for rape both surprisingly obvious (what sex isn’t obviously suppose to be consensual?) and ambiguous (the meaning of consent is too difficult pin down).