NY Times op-ed: Mishandling Rape

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<p>I suppose it is sexist toward women in this way. However, I find it interesting that you chose to couch the argument against criminalizing male consensual sexual activity in terms of how it it insults feminist ideals of autonomy and independence. Think about that for one moment. It’s like saying that police shouldn’t beat people for no reason because they might get bloodstains on their uniform. How about you don’t criminalize consensual sexual activity by males because you are potentially ruining men’s lives despite the fact that there was no breach of ethics?</p>

<p>What is happening here is that it is too difficult for the law to distinguish between some forms of consensual activity (e.g., both male and female are drunk and ‘decide’ in their impaired state to engage in sex) from rape (e.g., female is trashed and relatively sober male takes advantage of it). So the solution put forth is to criminalize consensual activity that might resemble rape to a 3rd party that wasn’t there and then trust that females won’t rely on the law when it is unethical to do so. </p>

<p>I absolutely think young women are having a difficult time separating assault from intoxicated sex. Absolutely. Should men not have sex with intoxicated women…perhaps not…but you cannot call consensual sex at the point of occurrence when both parties have been drinking sexual assault. You can’t call it assault the next morning and you certainly can’t call it assault 2 months later. I do not think college administrators have the ability to investigate and nuance those differences AND I have zero confidence of their ability to adjudicate it. </p>

<p>The whole thing is sexist that is what is so abhorrent. It’s sexist to presume that women are incapable of making decisions for themselves and need special protections absolving them of any decision they’ve made along the way. It’s sexist to presume that all men who have sex with a woman who has been drinking have committed sexual assault… Some women will be assaulted. Some men will assault. Not all women have been assaulted or all men are sexual predators. Our legal system is in place to nuance these differences.</p>

<p>Yeah. If you hold a gun to my head and shoot me, but we are both drunk, I will not be “held accountable” for your behavior. If you come into my house without my consent, but I have invited you in before, the police won’t ask if “I was loud and firm enough when I told you you couldn’t come into my house.”</p>

<p>If you and I get into a verbal fight at a bar and we have both been drinking, but you hit me in the face? Guess what? It’s still you and not me.</p>

<p>read this article if you can bear it. </p>

<p><a href=“After Trump Dine-N-Dash,  DeSantis Hands Out Cold Brews – Rolling Stone”>After Trump Dine-N-Dash,  DeSantis Hands Out Cold Brews – Rolling Stone;

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<p>The fact that some people actually believe that is why so many sexual predators use liquor as a weapon to seduce and rape. </p>

<p>No, I’m not saying that all drunken sex is rape. It isn’t. But the mere fact both parties had been drinking doesn’t mean it wasn’t. </p>

<p>Poetgrl, your two examples do not relate at all to the examples I was giving. Under the new law being advocated, if you and your significant other go to an anniversary dinner, have a few drinks, and and then have sexual intercourse afterwards, that is grounds for rape. If you were to do the same without alcohol but don’t actually say, “I would like to have sex now,” then that is rape even if it was consensual… </p>

<p>I think that it’s interesting how fearful we are about this idea of consent being an affirmative. I’m not afraid of yes means yes. Because, you know, if you want to come into my house, I have to ask you in. My body is no different.</p>

<p>If I open the door drunk and you push past me because I can’t say no? Guess what? Still B&E.</p>

<p>jonri, the key word in the passage you quoted was “consensual”. There are some syllogism confusion in these discussions. The new law basically says that there is no scenario of consensual sex if the female has had any alcohol at all. </p>

<p>@poetgrl, with the greatest respect, those analogies simply do not work in the context of determining consent with two drunk kids. Sex is a pleasurable act that people most often engage in voluntarily. In no universe is being shot in the head or hit in the face the same kind of thing. Very often, two people engage in consensual sex when both are intoxicated to some degree. I think the posters on this thread have made it clear that they are NOT talking about sober guy and incapacitated girl. I also don’t think that anyone was suggesting that those cases are the primary concern.</p>

<p>I do think that the idea that women are automatically assumed to be unable to give consent when drinking or intoxicated–not incapacitated–is sexist and wrong, and will simply result in push-back that takes attention away from the far larger problem of real, unreported, unpunished rapes and assaults. I also have the impression that some unstable young women have been encouraged by ideologues to use this to punish former boyfriends and men they chose to have sex with. I think they are very, very, very few.</p>

<p>People always tend to focus on the place where finer distinction must be drawn, no matter what the topic.</p>

<p>@mamalion, do you think that, from the published facts, including all the texts, the Occidental case was rape?</p>

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<p>I think this is an excellent point. Certainly, I have known a number of activist lesbians who thought this over the years.</p>

<p>And yes, I think jonri is correct in saying that predators have been using the haziness about consent in drunk sex forever.</p>

<p>Yes, I’m sure the big issue with rape is the drunk young man making a mistake. </p>

<p>carry on. I don’t belong on these threads anymore. </p>

<p>I think it is obvious that the big issue with rape is NOT a drunk young man making a mistake. </p>

<p>Poetgrl, you are inventing conflicts where none exist. The scenarios that you keep bringing up are rape–we all agree on that. But the way colleges like Berkeley are defining it now includes consensual sex.</p>

<p>Do you really not understand the point?</p>

<p>CA. This is the last thing I will ever post about rape on CC. I’ve lost patience. It’s not anybody’s fault. </p>

<p>I understand that one way or another there is always a conversation about rape being consensual. It is not. I understand that we continue to want to discuss this issue as if there is some great danger to men of being accused of rape wrongly. </p>

<p>This is the latest version of that same thing. </p>

<p>Working with rape survivors, nothing is more clear than how many barriers we put up to reporting. </p>

<p>I get frustrated when I see this is the hobby horse of the otherwise intelligent American. </p>

<p>Carry on. </p>

<p>There’s no point in having a discussion on something this important if people can’t follow basic logic rules.</p>

<p>If someone says that the statement “If A, then B” is false, that doesn’t mean they think they mean, “If A, then not B” is true. One doesn’t follow the other. </p>

<p>Some misguided colleges say that all drunken sex constitutes rape. That’s stupid. Every single person in this thread agrees it’s stupid. A few young men have been victimized by the application of the stupid rule-- maybe twenty nationwide? Maybe fifty? The rules should never have been adopted on any campus, and they should be changed at once.</p>

<p>But the drunk sex is always rape rule is a sideshow. We’re focusing on a teeny problem (about which we have no disagreement) and ignoring the real problem: campus rape that is actually rape. A low, conservative estimate of the number of women who get raped in college is one in 20. This enormous problem dwarfs the itty-bitty problem of a few men falling afoul of the wrong rule.</p>

<p>I have said that the rule should be changed pronto. But if we look at all the men who have been sanctioned by using the rule, we have to realize that a good percentage of them are rapists. Drunk sex is not always rape. But it’s sometimes rape.</p>

<p>A group of college administrators are not the correct individuals to make this determination. Every individual which is what makes this country so great is innocent until proven guilty however this ideology and Constitutional right is being ignored in these cases. Furthermore, the burden of proof is Without Any Reasonable Doubt. This young man has been tried and convicted not by a legal system but by a college. Do we want our sons and daughters to sign contracts with witnesses attesting to their consent before they engage in sex? </p>

<p>In a recent research paper by insurance underwriters:
UE Claims Data Liability Theories
Three-quarters of the student sexual assault claims resulted in litigation. Claimants argued that educational institutions:</p>

<ol>
<li>Did not follow their policies and procedures</li>
<li>Had confusing or unclear policies and procedures</li>
<li>Did not respond promptly or reasonably to an assault report</li>
<li>Treated the victim or the perpetrator cruelly or unfairly</li>
</ol>

<p>These four issues translated into the following causes of action (in order of frequency): negligence, breach of contract, Title IX violations, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and fraud. Less commonly alleged causes of action included defamation, due process violations, and breach of the covenant of good faith and fair dealing.</p>

<p>I was looking to find out many lawsuits have been filed. The Harvard data is 7500 but that does back far before the Dear Colleague letter. The only data I’ve been able to find is since the Dear John letter there are been 50 suits filed by males, but I haven’t located the total number of lawsuits.</p>

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Exactly.</p>

<p>collegealum…the key point is that when someone “consents” to sex while incapacitated it isn’t “consent” at all. At what point is someone “incapacitated?” Does the person have to be passed out cold? If the person is having difficulty walking and is slurring her words, can (s)he consent? If the person has a BAC twice the legal limit for driving can (s)he consent? If the person is under the influence of Ecstasy or Molly or a roofie, can (s)he consent? </p>

<p>The “rule” --to the extent it exists at all–may convince young men that it’s better not to have sex with someone who has been drinking because it’s hard to draw the line. So, in addition to telling our daughters that if they drink, especially if they drink to excess, they increase the risk they will be raped, we should tell our sons that if they have sex with a young woman who has been drinking, they increase the risk they will be accused of rape. And, if they choose to have sex with someone for the first time when she has been drinking, the risk is even greater. And if they choose to have sex with a young woman they just met for the first time when she had been drinking, the risk of a rape accusation is even higher. </p>

<p>Personally, I think the “accidental rapists” are rare. Yes, some men are falsely accused of rape–best estimate is 8% of all accusations–but I doubt that many of these involve the scenarios we argue about on this site. I think false accusation are relatively rare and I think they usually happen in the context of a woman who wants revenge (must commonly against an ex-boyfriend or someone she expected would become her boyfriend after sex who didn’t call her again) or out of some wish to escape punishment, e.g., she gets pregnant and tells her parents it was rape or she tells her jealous boyfriend that she was so drunk she didn’t know what she was doing. While they may get the publicity, I doubt there are a dozen “accidental rapists” cases a year. </p>

<p>As has been pointed out time and again, studies indicate that campus rapes are perpetrated by a small # of men who rape multiple times. Many of these men use booze as their weapon of choice. They are usually involved in getting the young woman intoxicated in the first place and they start off their evening (or other time) with a premeditated plan to rape someone. They drink too—and often only get really drunk AFTER raping a victim so they can pass the attack off as “drunken sex.” </p>

<p>The burden of proof for criminal conviction of sexual assault is Without a Reasonable Doubt. As it should be. </p>

<p>But there is no reason for the burden of proof for expulsion from college to be that high. Preponderance of the evidence is fine. If the preponderance of evidence says that a student sexually assaulted another student, the assaulting student should be gone.</p>

<p>But kicking rapists or believed or suspected rapists out of school solves nothing. Look at the case in VA where a now apparent although not yet convicted serial killer rapist was kicked out of two schools before he murdered his latest victim over 10 years later. They really have to be rapists or not be rapists for sure and then dealt with appropriately. I have noticed though that these changing rape rules have left some young women confused about what is and isn’t criminal conduct.</p>

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<p>It solves plenty. First, most obviously, it means that a woman doesn’t have to sit next to her rapist in math class, or see him walking down the hall in her dorm. If it did nothing else, it would be worthwhile.</p>

<p>Second, it gets rapists out of college. If I’m running a college, I’d like to get rid of the rapists, just because they are rapists and I don’t want them on my campus.</p>

<p>Third, it shows other potential rapists that the college is serious about getting rid of rapists.</p>