<p>“Why can’t men just be ethical and don’t indulge in sex when drunk or when the girl is drunk?”</p>
<p>Okay that’s it, now my kid isn’t going to drink until they’re 30 either, I’m going to call up and pass that new rule along today and I’m just positive it’ll be faithfully followed because I raised my kid right.</p>
<p>Look, let’s talk equality here. The reality is that the stats on women facing the possibility of being raped are still awful, I believe it’s still 1 out of 3 in their lifetime. </p>
<p>So while it may not be fair young women must be vigilant about their safety. Unfair, perhaps, realistic, yes. </p>
<p>POIH, here’s the difficulty with your take on this issue. You seem to be placing all the responsibility on the young men and the reality is that the young women will not be safe doing that. They need to own their own safety, take some self defense classes, learn how to walk confidently on the street. (Look up the interesting “targeting”, the personality traits that your classic rapist uses to target their victims). Better to give your daughters sensible and solid advice on how to protect themselves than to just warn them that the boys will be beasties.</p>
<p>There’s a difference between drunk and passed out, if everyone’s drunk then neither should probably be having sex but let’s be realistic here. And then there are stages of drunk, it’s tricky. But passed out, any guy who thinks it’s okay to have sex with a girl who’s passed out needs some professional help and some time in court. That goes for stalking behaviors also.</p>
<p>This is going to come as a huge shock to some people here, so brace yourselves. It isn’t just men who like sex and want to engage in it, okay ready; brace yourselves I am pretty darn sure women like it too, even college women. I also think it is remotely possible that some people use alcohol to lower their inhibiitons, you know to feel a little less anxious in a social situation and here is another shocker, ready: Alcohol makes you do things you regret sometimes. So could anyone here allow for the following possibility: Nice girl drinks too much, Nice boy drinks too much they dance, they flirt, they tumble into one of their single beds and have a drunken encounter. Next morning nice girl is embarrassed and ashamed of herself, maybe a little fuzzy on the details, she drank more then should have (by the way she still she is a nice girl, drunken sex does not make her bad), nice boy may feel garteful and happy to wake up with a pretty girl, but is a little fuzzy on the details, he drank way more then he should have. The girl tells all her friends about what happened, crying, I never do things like this! I can’t even remember how I wound up in his room! Her friends console her and maybe seeds of doubt are planted. She is a nice girl remember, nice girls don’t consent to drunken sex and boys are just apparently sex seeking beastie boys. Why is the nice boy responsible and not the nice girl? They both drank too much, I am sorry but it so beyond sexist to put this on the young man merely because he doesn’t regret what happened. </p>
<p>I think there is a lot at play here. I think it is saying girls should not or cannot want to have sex in the same way that men want to. I am going to say it again; brace yourselves: Girls like sex too, it isn’t just those nasty boys.</p>
<p>I do think the above scenario is WAY different then the young woman who drinks too much at a party and the boy who so generously offers to walk her home and then engages in sex with her after getting a drunken yes from her. I do think there are predators out there and they should be dealt with to the fullest extent of the law. I think colleges have to protect all their students from a hostile environment, whether it is sexual, racial or any other harrassment. I just worry about the morning after regrets and how the colleges may deal with that scenario. </p>
<p>I hate the idea of battle lines being drawn between the sexes, and I want my son to have the same rights as your daughter and the rest of the population if the first scenario occurred. Of course I want my son to be the man his father and I expect him to be, a gentleman who looks out others and respects himself too much to engage in drunken hook ups. I will continue to have discussions with him on this as will his father.</p>
<p>I don’t see it because I don’t see the world the way you do; I’m not a misandrist.</p>
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<p>Title IX doesn’t mean whatever you want to mean, folks. It’s not a blank check. With certain exceptions, it just says “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance…”</p>
<p>I was always averse to the “human resources”-approved way of looking at things, as I think their perspective can deviate substantially from that of common sense, and reading the opposing side of this discussion makes it clear to me that Title IX has suffered from atrocious mission creep since its inception.</p>
<p>Good questions, performersmom, but I don’t know the answers to them. My guess is that in today’s litigious environment, there probably are similar rules and yes, an employee probably can sue his employer for “not protecting him.”</p>
<p>I love this statement: “In California, case law has established that consent can be withdrawn at any time in a sexual act.” There is so much grey area here, it becomes almost impossible to sort out the truth, which is why you hardly ever see a case like this ever prosecuted in CA. </p>
<p>Sure, a girl getting attacked and raped on a dark street is a no-brainer; however, two people who willingly have sex and then something happens during the act, which may be interpreted differently by the guy and girl, is hardly a black and white situation. In this circumstance, one has to figure out who is telling the truth, a very difficult situation because there is no way to corroborate either person’s perception of what may have happened. How is the school going to determine the truth here? </p>
<p>If you’re saying the girl must always be believed regardless of the what the boy asserts, then I have a real problem with this. There is nothing written that says the girl is always telling the truth and the guy is always lying. If preponderance of evidence leads us to this conclusion, then my warning to all college men is that your constitutional rights to the equal protection of the laws have been severely compromised. College men are now second class citizens, no different than the black man (To Kill a Mockingbird) from the deep south who was always guilty of rape if a white woman said so. Thank you OCR.</p>
<p>parent57…according to some here our sons are beasts with no ethics, who can not control themselves and therefore the board should have a very easy time knowing the boy is obviously lying… the girl has a right at any time to change her mind, even the day after consensual sex… so why would you be concerned about their rights, they just dont deserve rights those nasty beasts…just smh</p>
<p>In my “To Kill a Mockingbird” analogy from my previous post, it struck me the rich irony of having the Office of CIVIL RIGHTS led by a black woman relegating all college men to the second-class status of a black man 50 to 75 years ago.</p>
<p>“I love this statement: “In California, case law has established that consent can be withdrawn at any time in a sexual act.” There is so much grey area here, it becomes almost impossible to sort out the truth, which is why you hardly ever see a case like this ever prosecuted in CA.”</p>
<p>Actually, on the contrary. There HAVE been cases prosecuted, successfully I might add - that’s precisely how case law is established.</p>
<p>Of course, that’s just law. THe OCR deals with college administrative policy, not law.</p>
<p>I’m just going to be musing all day about how stopping a sex act when consent is withdrawn during a sex act works exactly, did California offer any time period like 2 seconds or 1 minute? </p>
<p>Sorry, I take this issue very seriously, especially regarding the safety of young women not just on campus and am concerned about the attitudes of some parents posting here who seem to feel that instead of preparing their daughters for the real world and how to protect themselves want to throw all responsibility and blame on the young men. </p>
<p>I think crazymom hit it right on the mark, except that I actually am not sure about that drunken yes after a boy walks you home. Really at some point yes has to mean yes and no, no. Do you see how guys can get confused. Sure I would expect a decent young man to contemplate “Oh she’s drunk and she said yes but I offered to walk her home so that’s all I’m going to do”. I mean what’s the difference between a drunken yes in a dorm room and a drunken yes on a walk home. This is where we get all muddied up. </p>
<p>And yes, I believe in “right to work” states a woman can take legal action if a company makes no attempt to stop a hostile work environment. So can a man. It happened at a place where I worked, pranksters that wouldn’t stop so the woman sued. I’m fine with that, these particular guys were so juvenile, it wasn’t really a sexual thing, just stupid pranks and general harassment so I’m sure sexual harassment would be even more likely to be on the table and I’m fine with that.</p>
I guess I wonder whether some of the folks on this thread believe that this scenario ever happens. I haven’t really heard any good explanation of why the boy’s behavior should be criminalized in this situation-unless you believe that this situation doesn’t really happen. It’s easy enough to say that the law looks on this situation as rape, but I would be surprised if there has ever been any conviction for rape on a set of facts like this–unless, perhaps, the girl was white and the boy was black.</p>
<p>"I’m just going to be musing all day about how stopping a sex act when consent is withdrawn during a sex act works exactly, did California offer any time period like 2 seconds or 1 minute? "</p>
<p>That’s why there is prosecutorial discretion, and juries. This really isn’t so difficult as we all make it out to be. Prosecutors don’t bring cases they don’t believe they will win. There are several different crimes - forcible rape is different from rape which is different from sexual assault which is different from assault, and each of them has degrees. </p>
<p>The key issue is whether affirmative, voluntary consent is given, and whether the subject was capable of consent. As to the state of the male, charges will be different depending on whether there was criminal intent. It really, really! is just not that difficult or different from other areas of criminal law.</p>
<p>Of course the OCR deals with law–it deals with Title IX, which is law. And it’s nonsense to say that colleges don’t prosecute rape–they do. The very OCR letter we are talking about is telling colleges how, under Title IX, OCR thinks colleges must prosecute allegations of “Sexual Violence.”</p>
<p>And mini, are you really saying that if both the boy and the girl were drunk, there could be no criminal intent, and thus the charge of rape can’t be maintained? That seems contrary to your insistence that it’s rape when the girl is drunk, even if the boy is drunk.</p>
<p>Happened at my school and the boy was charged initially with rape. Wasn’t found guilty but lost his scholarship and left the school, hopefully managed to pick up the pieces and move on but must have been very traumatic.</p>
<p>I had a friend as an undergraduate in college who was a really cool person for the most part – very smart, pretty, came from an accomplished family in the Northeast. She and I would sometimes attend parties together and she quite frequently would remain at the parties and have an encounter. I did not judge her for this. It was the seventies, things were very free and loose, pre-Aids, etc. The interesting thing is that whenever my friend got especially inebriated she would frequently go into a long, rambling description of times she had been raped. It was always shocking and sort of transfixing. Listening to her, you’d think she’d been raped dozens of times.</p>
<p>I think if this same girl were on a campus today she would probably manage to destroy the lives of at least several young men. I really do. Perhaps my friend really had been raped at some point and her sort of serial claims of being raped when she was not was a manifestation of PTS. I really have no idea but she was caught in a sort of endless loop of pursuing casual sex, then calling it rape.</p>
<p>Emotional instability can manifest in lots of different ways. In our era of hyper-sexual sensitivity, sex and rape is on the minds of everyone and a female student with “issues” is going to be very vulnerable to inflating sexual encounters to rape within her own mind.</p>
<p>It’s interesting if you look at the DSK case and Duke Lacrosse. In both cases, the accuser claimed to have been gang raped (unfounded) and clearly had emotional instabilities.</p>
<p>This is what scares me about this new “Letter”. It makes it quite easy for an unstable or ill-intentioned young lady to destroy a young man’s life. Too easy.</p>
<p>I’m parent of a male and a female – and obviously I want my daughter to be safe at college. But I don’t really subscribe to this notion that males are beasts and females are always the innocent victims. Life just isn’t that simple.</p>
<p>I also do think that a lot of parents are irresponsible in how they raise their kids in terms of instilling good judgement on the issues of alcohol and casual sex.</p>
<p>The above response is to Hunt’s disbelieve that crazymom’s scenario could happen. And sorry mini, I wasn’t being totally serious about that CA law, just musing about how complicated this can be.</p>
<p>^^I agree. I really don’t have a problem if businesses and colleges want to arbitrate situations like these, but really, if someone believes they have been raped they need to call the police. If they don’t “know” if they’ve been raped they need to call a counselor and figure out what they think. I really refuse to believe that four or five decades of fighting for equality of the sexes is going to deteriorate back to a women are weak and needy and men are strong and beastie mentality. Yuck. If the college “helps” this person or both involved parties by having a process to connect the parties with the correct “help” then great. I actually thought the college mentioned a few links ago had a pretty good stepped process for handling Title IX allegations.</p>
<p>I also think anybody being “accused” or being an accuser of anything related to work environment, related to college environment, etc. is smart to call an attorney to ensure they understand what their legal rights are. There are several points of intersection. It’s very complex these days and it’s not “dumb” to understand what your protections are as an accused person or as someone who is going to accuse another person or group of people.</p>
<p>“And mini, are you really saying that if both the boy and the girl were drunk, there could be no criminal intent, and thus the charge of rape can’t be maintained? That seems contrary to your insistence that it’s rape when the girl is drunk, even if the boy is drunk.”</p>
<p>What is so difficult? There is first degree murder, second degree murder, 1st degree manslaughter, 2nd degree manslaughter, involuntary manslaughter, etc., etc., etc. This is no different. If a jury finds that a drunken boy had an intent to have sex with a woman who was incapable of giving consent, or didn’t give affirmative, voluntary consent, then he could be found guilty of any number of offenses, depending on what charge the prosecutor decided to bring. If there was no intent to have sex with a woman who didn’t giver consent, then (as I have seen) the most likely charge is simple assault - if the prosecutor decides to bring a case at all.</p>
<p>Sewhappy - it is not uncommon for women who have been subject to child sexual assault to end up in a series of multiple sexual experiences, both consensual and non-consensual. Also to experience alcohol and drug problems (we see them all the time.)</p>
Have you seen a conviction in such a case? I’d be very interested in hearing the particulars.
As you note, a prosecutor has discretion whether or not to pursue such a case, and one reason that a case might not be pursued is the difficulty of meeting the criminal standard of proof. The OCR letter makes it much more difficult for a college to decide not to pursue an accusation of sexual violence, since it imposes the laxest possible standard of proof.</p>