Dennis Prager says women campus assualts lie

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

Very well said, Simon. You have a knack for summing up complex debates. I think the best we can do is get the message out there that only yes means yes, that sexual assault is always and everywhere 0% the victim's fault, and guys that try to use tricks or manipulate circumstances to get laid are pathetic scum who should be treated as such even if it can't be proven that they committed a crime. We may never know whether a particular case was a drunken hookup or coercion even in a perfect society, but normalizing those 3 things into the culture will go a long way toward making things better.

[Beowulf]

In none of them, can a female rape a male by having vaginal sex with him. The closest is the attempted rape question at the end. Similarly, if a guy is forced to penetrate another guy, it's still not rape. Nor is being forced to give oral sex to a woman.

Which is bullshit, but a woman forcing a man to penetrate her is very very rare, and the law has yet to catch up to the fact that it exists.

Very very rare? Prove it.

Note that the majority of surveys don't even ask about it. Why? Because forcing a guy to have sex with you isn't rape, apparently. It's just a guy getting lucky. One survey that does is "The National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey: 2010", which gives a estimated number of victims of rape (defined as being forced to have sex, both being penetrated, and made to penetrate) at nearly 6 million men in America. More interesting, is the 12 month prevalence data: 1.1% of men or an estimated 1.267 million were victims of being made to penetrate. Or in other words, raped. Compared to Table 2.1 on the previous page, where the female data indicates 1.1%, or an estimated 1.27 million women were raped. It's not very very rare. It's not even rare. It's the exact same prevalence. You are as likely to be raped as a guy as you are a woman.

[Simon_Jester]

^ Um... yes. Very well said.

And essentially, the few people in this thread who are actually willing to argue that we totally ban normative behavior (social drinking) come off as particularly insane, because they're arguing a very radical position. (Also, while we're at it, let's just ban cars to reduce car accidents - or perhaps mandate a nation wide speed limit of 5 MPH.)

Well, hold on here.

Given that rape is a huge problem, banning this normative behavior isn't actually an unreasonable proposal as such.

I mean... ask yourself this. Would it be worth it for all Americans to stop drinking at all, ever as the price of preventing, say, twenty million rapes over the next forty years? I know damn well I'd swear off alcohol for the rest of my life to prevent (statistically speaking) one fifteenth of one rape. The cost to me of not drinking booze is... if that's X amount of cost, the cost to a woman of having unwanted sex related to alcohol is WAY more than 15X.

So no, to me someone like Terralthra does not come across as insane.

The problem is, while the idea "ban social drinking to prevent rape" is not inherently insane or unworthy, it is incredibly unlikely to work, because we already tried Prohibition in this country and it was a disaster. And the idea encounters pushback from people who go "wait what are you out of your mind" in response, which in my opinion they are wrong to do. But, let's say they are... wrong in a way I can understand and take into account.

[AniThyng]

^ Um... yes. Very well said.

And essentially, the few people in this thread who are actually willing to argue that we totally ban normative behavior (social drinking) come off as particularly insane, because they're arguing a very radical position. (Also, while we're at it, let's just ban cars to reduce car accidents - or perhaps mandate a nation wide speed limit of 5 MPH.)

Well, hold on here.

Given that rape is a huge problem, banning this normative behavior isn't actually an unreasonable proposal as such.

I mean... ask yourself this. Would it be worth it for all Americans to stop drinking at all, ever as the price of preventing, say, twenty million rapes over the next forty years? I know damn well I'd swear off alcohol for the rest of my life to prevent (statistically speaking) one fifteenth of one rape. The cost to me of not drinking booze is... if that's X amount of cost, the cost to a woman of having unwanted sex related to alcohol is WAY more than 15X.

So no, to me someone like Terralthra does not come across as insane.

The problem is, while the idea "ban social drinking to prevent rape" is not inherently insane or unworthy, it is incredibly unlikely to work, because we already tried Prohibition in this country and it was a disaster. And the idea encounters pushback from people who go "wait what are you out of your mind" in response, which in my opinion they are wrong to do. But, let's say they are... wrong in a way I can understand and take into account.

Premise one: You can change you own behavior but have limited control over the behavior of others (outside of indirect means like changing their way of thinking etc)

Premise two: Being intoxicated does not make you culpable for the poor decisions that you make or being culpable for being taken advantage of, but it is not going to undo the effects of being taken advantage of if it should happen

Premise three: There exist people who will take advantage of your intoxication to possibly perform a crime

Premise four: In a situation where one party is amoral and sober and the other is not, the amoral/immoral party may in fact initiate a rape.

I'm failing to see why given these premises, "do not get intoxicated" is not sound advice for anyone wishing to avoid being the victim of being taken advantage of, given that "do not be intoxicated" is the next best thing to "eliminate amoral/immoral people", and you can deliberately chose to avoid being intoxicated, but the extent to which you can avoid a criminal is limited to making sweeping societal value changes. And you can't "avoid rapists" because of the whole "committed by someone known" thing.

[Terralthra]

In none of them, can a female rape a male by having vaginal sex with him. The closest is the attempted rape question at the end. Similarly, if a guy is forced to penetrate another guy, it's still not rape. Nor is being forced to give oral sex to a woman.

Which is bullshit, but a woman forcing a man to penetrate her is very very rare, and the law has yet to catch up to the fact that it exists.

Very very rare? Prove it.

Note that the majority of surveys don't even ask about it. Why? Because forcing a guy to have sex with you isn't rape, apparently. It's just a guy getting lucky. One survey that does is "The National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey: 2010", which gives a estimated number of victims of rape (defined as being forced to have sex, both being penetrated, and made to penetrate) at nearly 6 million men in America. More interesting, is the 12 month prevalence data: 1.1% of men or an estimated 1.267 million were victims of being made to penetrate. Or in other words, raped. Compared to Table 2.1 on the previous page, where the female data indicates 1.1%, or an estimated 1.27 million women were raped. It's not very very rare. It's not even rare. It's the exact same prevalence. You are as likely to be raped as a guy as you are a woman.

Except...the figures for lifetime prevalence are vastly different for men and women. Women: completed forced penetration, 12.3%. Men: made to penetrate, 4.8%. That's not "just as likely", that's "a third as likely." Since that figure of "made to penetrate" includes drug/alcohol-facilitated and attempted, the comparison is more accurately 4.8% for men, 18.3% for women. If you correctly include the figures for attempted and drug-facilitated for men vs. women in the 12-month prevalence, it's men 1.1%, women 1.8%

Sexual coercion, unwanted sexual contact, and non-contact unwanted sexual experiences similarly have a prevalence for women of two to three times the prevalence for men.

One can certainly come up with possible explanations for the statistical differences between 12-month and lifetime prevalance, but the chance of being raped in one's lifetime is vastly different for men and women.

[Beowulf]

Very very rare? Prove it.

Note that the majority of surveys don't even ask about it. Why? Because forcing a guy to have sex with you isn't rape, apparently. It's just a guy getting lucky. One survey that does is "The National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey: 2010", which gives a estimated number of victims of rape (defined as being forced to have sex, both being penetrated, and made to penetrate) at nearly 6 million men in America. More interesting, is the 12 month prevalence data: 1.1% of men or an estimated 1.267 million were victims of being made to penetrate. Or in other words, raped. Compared to Table 2.1 on the previous page, where the female data indicates 1.1%, or an estimated 1.27 million women were raped. It's not very very rare. It's not even rare. It's the exact same prevalence. You are as likely to be raped as a guy as you are a woman.

Except...the figures for lifetime prevalence are vastly different for men and women. Women: completed forced penetration, 12.3%. Men: made to penetrate, 4.8%. That's not "just as likely", that's "a third as likely." Since that figure of "made to penetrate" includes drug/alcohol-facilitated and attempted, the comparison is more accurately 4.8% for men, 18.3% for women. If you correctly include the figures for attempted and drug-facilitated for men vs. women in the 12-month prevalence, it's men 1.1%, women 1.8%

Sexual coercion, unwanted sexual contact, and non-contact unwanted sexual experiences similarly have a prevalence for women of two to three times the prevalence for men.

One can certainly come up with possible explanations for the statistical differences between 12-month and lifetime prevalance, but the chance of being raped in one's lifetime is vastly different for men and women.

If you were born in the 50s, your chance of being raped in one's lifetime may be vastly different for men and women (there's a good argument that older men might have a harder time admitting they were raped.) But that doesn't matter. What matters is your future chance of getting raped, which based on the immediate past, indicates it's a wash between men and women. Similarly, the 12 month prevalence for other sexual violence is fairly close (2.0 vs 1.5 for sexual coercion, 2.2 vs 2.3 for unwanted sexual contact, and 3.0 vs 2.7 for non-contact unwanted sexual contact).

And you can't read. It's the exact same 12 month prevalence for rape, as the attempt and drug facilitated numbers are included in the 1.1% figure for women. The percentages for rape in a 12 month period are exactly the same. And it's not like it changed in the following year's survey. It's got the exact same relative prevalence there: nearly identical.

[Channel72]

The problem is, while the idea "ban social drinking to prevent rape" is not inherently insane or unworthy, it is incredibly unlikely to work, because we already tried Prohibition in this country and it was a disaster. And the idea encounters pushback from people who go "wait what are you out of your mind" in response, which in my opinion they are wrong to do. But, let's say they are... wrong in a way I can understand and take into account.

In my opinion they are not wrong to push back like this, because it's not very interesting or useful to discuss ideas which are totally impractical to actually implement, especially when discussing something as serious as rape. Yeah - we could (naively) ban alcohol to reduce rape stats. We could also ban cars to prevent car accidents. Would you give up driving to prevent ~50,000 people fucking dying every year - (and thus prevent almost two million deaths over the next 40 years. When will you people put an end to this automotive genocide!?)

Of course... I'm being facetious. And I say this as someone who has little use for cars. I live in an urban area so I rarely drive anyway. But I realize that such a suggestion is obscenely impractical. And so is banning alcohol to prevent rape.

It's also not the kind of "long-term" solution we should be looking for. If anything, it's a band-aid. The long-term solution is a cultural-shift in attitudes towards women, not some sort of silly punitive law enforcement measure like "ban alcohol". If anything, liberal societies tend to lean towards allowing more narcotics/depressants/mind-altering substances, rather than criminalizing them. Criminalizing these substances tends to result in way more extreme problems than the actual alledged benefits.

[amigocabal]

The problem is, while the idea "ban social drinking to prevent rape" is not inherently insane or unworthy, it is incredibly unlikely to work, because we already tried Prohibition in this country and it was a disaster. And the idea encounters pushback from people who go "wait what are you out of your mind" in response, which in my opinion they are wrong to do. But, let's say they are... wrong in a way I can understand and take into account.

In my opinion they are not wrong to push back like this, because it's not very interesting or useful to discuss ideas which are totally impractical to actually implement, especially when discussing something as serious as rape. Yeah - we could (naively) ban alcohol to reduce rape stats. We could also ban cars to prevent car accidents. Would you give up driving to prevent ~50,000 people fucking dying every year - (and thus prevent almost two million deaths over the next 40 years. When will you people put an end to this automotive genocide!?)

Of course... I'm being facetious. And I say this as someone who has little use for cars. I live in an urban area so I rarely drive anyway. But I realize that such a suggestion is obscenely impractical. And so is banning alcohol to prevent rape.

It's also not the kind of "long-term" solution we should be looking for. If anything, it's a band-aid. The long-term solution is a cultural-shift in attitudes towards women, not some sort of silly punitive law enforcement measure like "ban alcohol". If anything, liberal societies tend to lean towards allowing more narcotics/depressants/mind-altering substances, rather than criminalizing them. Criminalizing these substances tends to result in way more extreme problems than the actual alledged benefits.

So what is this cultural shift that you are proposing?

[Terralthra]

And you can't read. It's the exact same 12 month prevalence for rape, as the attempt and drug facilitated numbers are included in the 1.1% figure for women. The percentages for rape in a 12 month period are exactly the same. And it's not like it changed in the following year's survey. It's got the exact same relative prevalence there: nearly identical.

I just want to be clear here: your belief is that 0.5+0.4+0.7 = 1.1? And on the basis of that arithmetic, you're saying I can't read?

[Beowulf]

Not only will I claim you can't read, but I'll also claim you can't do arithmetic(1.6 != 1., and lack critical thinking skills.

I'll give you a clue: the prevalence rate doesn't say how many times it happens in a year. Some woman could get both raped by force, and by intoxication. And by a guy who couldn't actually get it up. Counts in all three rows, but only once for the "raped this year". It's like that old joke about there's not enough time for school, because we spend 8 hours a day sleeping, or 122 days a year, have summer break of two months, etc.

Moron.

[Terralthra]

Not only will I claim you can't read, but I'll also claim you can't do arithmetic(1.6 != 1., and lack critical thinking skills.

I'll give you a clue: the prevalence rate doesn't say how many times it happens in a year. Some woman could get both raped by force, and by intoxication. And by a guy who couldn't actually get it up. Counts in all three rows, but only once for the "raped this year". It's like that old joke about there's not enough time for school, because we spend 8 hours a day sleeping, or 122 days a year, have summer break of two months, etc.

Moron.

No, I was pointing out that you can't do math if you thought the prevalence rates were an equal 1.1% and that they factored in all of the subtypes. Which you said, explicitly, they were and they did. Both can not be the case with the subtype prevalences listed. That was, in fact, my point. You might, if you weren't a fucking moron, have guessed that by the fact that it was a question, phrased as if I couldn't believe that you were actually that big of a fucking moron. You fucking moron.

Also, if a woman gets raped more per year than a man does, then she clearly was more likely to get raped than a man, you fucking moron.

[Beowulf]

So, you're claiming that more than 1.1% of the female population got raped in 2009, despite the text clearly stating: "One percent, or approximately 1.3 million women, reported some type of rape victim- ization in the 12 months prior to taking the survey." The 1.1% rate does factor in all the subtypes, you moron. Note that the prevalence says how many people got raped, but nothing about how many rapes of either men or women occurred. It's unknown from the data given how many times men or women who are victimized in a year are victimized in that year.

Nonetheless, the average guy, and the average girl, have that same percentage chance of ending up a victim of rape in a given year.

[Simon_Jester]

I'm failing to see why given these premises, "do not get intoxicated" is not sound advice for anyone wishing to avoid being the victim of being taken advantage of, given that "do not be intoxicated" is the next best thing to "eliminate amoral/immoral people", and you can deliberately chose to avoid being intoxicated, but the extent to which you can avoid a criminal is limited to making sweeping societal value changes.

In that case, you are choosing to avoid being a victim by avoiding intoxication. This is sound advice, but many women will object "I shouldn't have to give up parties and social drinking altogether for fear of rape!" That's an understandable reaction on their part.

It's also not really my point. My point was that in order to eliminate "muddy consent" sexual interactions (which may or may not be deemed rape, depending almost entirely on context and the details of individual people's alcohol tolerance)... basically you'd have to eliminate alcohol consumption altogether.

I don't have a problem with that, it's not objectively bad to eliminate social drinking. Thing is, realistically it's impossible. Nearly every society throughout history has had alcohol and intoxication issues, and attempts to do things like Prohibition in the US are almost universal failures.

So we can't make the question of "what happens when drunk people meet and have sex?" go away. We can't eliminate the 'get drunk' side of the equation; it's been tried. And we can't eliminate the 'people meet' side except by segregating the sexes and/or forcing everyone to drink alone.

Which means the question has to be addressed somehow, and our choice of how we address it will have implications for the broader effort to address rape culture in particular and women's issues in general.

And you can't "avoid rapists" because of the whole "committed by someone known" thing.

In many cases, the rapes are being committed by men who are in some sense 'profile of a rapist' types... against women known to them personally. It would seem logical to avoid spending time around those individual men, then.

"Avoid rapists" isn't the same as "avoid muggers." It's more like "avoid violent, angry men who exhibit misogynistic attitudes and feel women owe them sex."

[Channel72]

I don't have a problem with that, it's not objectively bad to eliminate social drinking. Thing is, realistically it's impossible. Nearly every society throughout history has had alcohol and intoxication issues, and attempts to do things like Prohibition in the US are almost universal failures.

Well, the Saudis managed to ban alcohol (except among the elite who can de-facto do whatever they want). And surely rape NEVER happens in Saudi Arabia! [/sarcasm]

Surely, no alcohol = bastion of women's rights / feminist utopia.

[AniThyng]

In that case, you are choosing to avoid being a victim by avoiding intoxication. This is sound advice, but many women will object "I shouldn't have to give up parties and social drinking altogether for fear of rape!" That's an understandable reaction on their part.

It would seem then that many people, despite knowing that becoming intoxicated increases the risk of being raped/being a rapist conclude that the value of getting tipsy/drunk is still worth the risk, however small or large it may be. why is this?

Though I suppose people also knowingly drive drunk despite the risk of outright *death* so...

[Covenant]

Drinking is one of those things that fucks up a lot of otherwise simple solutions, simply because people will flat-out refuse to act "rationally" when it comes to such a popular thing. In any case, the best solution to stop rapes (and also excess drinking) are to reform the social climate where people learn their behavioral norms. Working to remove the socialized "binge drinking" or "drink my ass off" culture as well as removing the "take advantage of inebriated women" and the "sex is the ultimate definition of power and authority" culture (two aspects of a 'rape culture' in other words) will help refine the social norms. There's no easy solution for that, it just involves a lot of people having lots of arguments over a long time and doing as much social education as possible.

These situations would be better without alcohol, but there's no way to make that happen. This is the downfall of theorycrafting a solution that relies on jackhammering one behavior so hard with punishments that it becomes unthinkable: it may be unthinkable, but it will not be impossible to perform.

[amigocabal]

I don't have a problem with that, it's not objectively bad to eliminate social drinking. Thing is, realistically it's impossible. Nearly every society throughout history has had alcohol and intoxication issues, and attempts to do things like Prohibition in the US are almost universal failures.

Well, the Saudis managed to ban alcohol (except among the elite who can de-facto do whatever they want). And surely rape NEVER happens in Saudi Arabia! [/sarcasm]

Surely, no alcohol = bastion of women's rights / feminist utopia.

and because fornication is illegal there, all the girls crying rape are only making it up to avoid prison [/moresarcasm]

[Metahive]

What's so unreasonable about my proposals?

1.Know your limits, don't drink enough to turn into an atavus
2.Don't look for sex while drunk or with people who are drunk

Yeah, I'm firmly opposed to binge-drinking, go figure. I think society would be better off without that fratboy shit anyway.

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

Unfortunately, we don't jail people for years on ambiguous evidence because you don't personally approve of their social conduct.

[Simon_Jester]

What's so unreasonable about my proposals?

1.Know your limits, don't drink enough to turn into an atavus
2.Don't look for sex while drunk or with people who are drunk

Yeah, I'm firmly opposed to binge-drinking, go figure. I think society would be better off without that fratboy shit anyway.

The problem is that a large percentage of all humans, including women, routinely drink as a way of deliberately altering their own state of consciousness. When they do that, they often socialize with friends and acquaintances (and loved ones).

So as a man, you don't have to drink enough to turn you into a Neanderthal to find yourself in a sexual situation that looks reasonably sincere, while in a state of mind that is only mildly different from where you would normally be, with an offer from a person who is behaving more or less as you would expect them to behave (i.e. not falling-down drunk).

The solution is supposed to be "never have sex with anyone in a situation where alcohol is involved," except that this is grossly unrealistic given that men and women both continue to voluntarily go to parties where alcohol is involved.

So if you can't acknowledge that there is at least a real possibility of a simple mistake, as distinct from an intentional rape, occurring in such a situation...

Yeah, I can see how taking a hardline stance on this issue will tend to disaffect a lot of people who are otherwise fully 100% sympathetic to the idea of fighting rape culture and "don't be that guy" and so on.

[TheHammer]

Does the current law actually hold, as Terralthra says, that consensual sex with a drunk person is considered rape? My understanding was that they would have to be drunk to the point of being incapable of making decisions, which is well past the point of memory blackout.

Therein lies the problem. Its not cut and dry. Most laws say that if someone is in such a state that they are "unable to consent" that it would be rape. To me, a reasonable standard would be that they were in such state of mind that they don't know where they are, unable to say either yes or no. But if you stretch that definition of "unable to consent" to include "Gave consent, but was under the influence of alcohol", then even the concept of "yes means yes" falls apart. As I noted before, we don't excuse drunk drivers because they were under the influence when they drove. Quite the contrary, we lambast them for being "irresponsible" for choosing to drive after drinking.

That's why I'm an advocate that if you make the decision to drink, then you must accept the consequences of your own actions while under the influence of alcohol. "No still means no", but "yes means yes" in that scenario and we're not sending good people to jail because a second party regretted their actions when they sobered up.

Let's put it this way: If you get drunk and I convince you to write me a check while you're drunk, if you were able to show that you were in fact under the influence then not only is that check worthless, but I could find myself in hot water for theft if I tried to cash it. Yes, even if you were all smiles while signing it. Now I realize it's pretty difficult to prove you were drunk when I took advantage, just as it's difficult in rape cases, but the principle is the same.

Then how could anyone legally pay a bar tab at the end of the night? If I paid for any sort of entertainment while under the influence would I therefore be entitled to a refund? Rather poorly thought out argument you've made. Please try again later.

You're also equating driving while drunk (which is a crime) with being raped while drunk (which is not).

No I'm not saying anything of the sort. Being raped while drunk is still rape. Forced sex, or sex with someone who is unconscious or in such a mental state that they are unaware of their surroundings (and thus what is going on) is still rape.

I'm arguing that consensual sex between two drunk individuals is not rape simply because their inhibitions were lowered and they made a choice they might not otherwise have made sober. Indeed, lowering ones inhibitions is a known consequence and even an expectation of drinking. Essentially, if it wasn't rape had both parties were sober, it shouldn't be rape because they'd been drinking.

[TheHammer]

Does the current law actually hold, as Terralthra says, that consensual sex with a drunk person is considered rape? My understanding was that they would have to be drunk to the point of being incapable of making decisions, which is well past the point of memory blackout.

Therein lies the problem. Its not cut and dry. Most laws say that if someone is in such a state that they are "unable to consent" that it would be rape. To me, a reasonable standard would be that they were in such state of mind that they don't know where they are, unable to say either yes or no. But if you stretch that definition of "unable to consent" to include "Gave consent, but was under the influence of alcohol", then even the concept of "yes means yes" falls apart. As I noted before, we don't excuse drunk drivers because they were under the influence when they drove. Quite the contrary, we lambast them for being "irresponsible" for choosing to drive after drinking.

That's why I'm an advocate that if you make the decision to drink, then you must accept the consequences of your own actions while under the influence of alcohol. "No still means no", but "yes means yes" in that scenario and we're not sending good people to jail because a second party regretted their actions when they sobered up.

Ahem

First of all Fuck You, you Rape Apologist Scum.

Ok. That having been said, here is the issue.

I deem this an appropriate response to your flat out libelous statement

With respect to drunk drivers, people who drive while drunk are not actually liable for the act of driving while drunk in itself. They are liable for what amounts to negligence. For failing to take the precautions necessary to keep them from driving drunk in the first place. They fail in their duty of care to everyone else around them when they get on the road. A duty of care that exists toward others, but that does not extend to the prevention of crimes against their person. If someone is drunk and because of that drunkeness is an easy victim of fraud, drunkeness on the part of the victim does not excuse the fraud, because the act of fraud is an act committed against them by someone else making the active choice to do so.

The point is we still hold persons who drive drunk accountable for their actions. I'm not saying that crimes committed against drunk individuals is "okay" simply because they are drunk. Fraud is fraud whether the individual is drunk or sober. Consensual sex between two persons however isn't a crime, not in the 21st century first world anyway.

No One has a duty of care to prevent someone else from victimizing them, in other words.

At question is whether or not someone was victimized when they gave consent. Make no mistake, I'm not saying its "open season" on girls who are drunk. I'm saying that if they decide to get drunk, and in that state decide to have sex with another person (who is also likely drunk) that state of affairs should not be reclassified as "rape" after the fact when they sobered up.

Additionally, trying to look for philosophical or logical consistency in the criminal code is like looking for leprechauns at the ends of rainbows, so I really dont see the point of the drunk driving statute being used as a counter-example. Its existence implies absolutely nothing regarding the correctness of rape statues, because there is no consistency in the criminal code.
....

I believe that's the point here... The criminal code is broken which leads to defensiveness whenever the subject of rape or sexual assault is brought up.

One of the first things alcohol impairs is the ability of the prefrontal cortex to regulate behavior. It weakens the outgoing connections. Input goes in. Outputs dont leave, not because it does not send them, but because the line is blocked.

One might argue that this is one of the points of getting drunk to begin with.

There are two major parts of the brain that handle decision making re: sex. The amygdala and the prefrontal cortex. The amygdala gets input from certain lovely little parts of the hypothalamus etc that tell it that Person A is some sort of Sexy. It Wants. Signals prefrontal cortex for a sanity check while it tells the rest of the brain to Initiate Seduction Protocol. If sober, the prefrontal cortex may send an abort code to the rest of the brain if it decides that mating is a bad idea (the amygdala almost always wants to mate, so the prefrontal cortex may decided that cost/benefit ratio is not in favor, or because there are other social obligations like a pre-existing relationship or monastic vows that preclude mating). The decision is made by way of the relative strength of both sets of signals. If not sober, the abort code (if present) is artificially weak. It is sent at full strength, but does not reach the intended recipients. This is often so much the case with drunkeness that people disassociate completely, and their higher cognitive functions become passive witnesses to their actions.

So then, if two people were drinking they'd both be in this state. (More after the break)

They might say "Yes" in such a state, but they dont have a valid mental quorum. It is not Them who makes that decision. It is a temporarily brain damaged person.

The next day, everything reintegrates. Which means the prefrontal cortex gets its voice back and its input is incorporated into the consciousness. And that fully realized person has to deal with the consequences of what someone did to them while they were physiologically unable to make informed decisions. Now, this might not be a problem. If for example the prefrontal cortex would have given the go ahead to sleep with someone, consent can be given post-facto now that the mind has its quorum. If not... it is rape. And the rapist has no one to blame but the rapist.

Where your argument falls apart, as I alluded to above, is the fact that the so-called "rapist" would also likely be drunk. He (or she for political correctness) also said "yes" in such a state that they did not have a mental quorum. How can you then therefore classify the act as "rape" on the part of one of the individuals? In one sense you're saying that the "victim" was in such a state of mind that they could not be held accountable for their actions while drunk, yet the "offender" despite being in this same state of mind, is a "rapist" and has only themselves to blame?

No, that makes no fucking sense.

If there is any sense of justice, or equality before the law, both individuals should be accountable for their own actions. And that goes for an individual who commits actual rape (defined as truly non-consensual sex) or any other crime while under the influence. I don't excuse their behavior simply because they'd been drinking. But I don't think you benefit society by making legal acts criminal based on how a person happens to feel about it the next day.

[Beowulf]

Where your argument falls apart, as I alluded to above, is the fact that the so-called "rapist" would also likely be drunk. He (or she for political correctness) also said "yes" in such a state that they did not have a mental quorum. How can you then therefore classify the act as "rape" on the part of one of the individuals? In one sense you're saying that the "victim" was in such a state of mind that they could not be held accountable for their actions while drunk, yet the "offender" despite being in this same state of mind, is a "rapist" and has only themselves to blame?

No, that makes no fucking sense.

If there is any sense of justice, or equality before the law, both individuals should be accountable for their own actions. And that goes for an individual who commits actual rape (defined as truly non-consensual sex) or any other crime while under the influence. I don't excuse their behavior simply because they'd been drinking. But I don't think you benefit society by making legal acts criminal based on how a person happens to feel about it the next day.

The solution some feminists would come up with is something like the following. Declare the rape isn't non-consensual sex, but non-consensual penetration of the victim. Then the guy is a victim of sexual assault, but the woman is a victim of rape. Because guys can't get raped by women. And since rape is worse, her rapist gets punished.

[PKRudeBoy]

Where your argument falls apart, as I alluded to above, is the fact that the so-called "rapist" would also likely be drunk. He (or she for political correctness) also said "yes" in such a state that they did not have a mental quorum. How can you then therefore classify the act as "rape" on the part of one of the individuals? In one sense you're saying that the "victim" was in such a state of mind that they could not be held accountable for their actions while drunk, yet the "offender" despite being in this same state of mind, is a "rapist" and has only themselves to blame?

No, that makes no fucking sense.

If there is any sense of justice, or equality before the law, both individuals should be accountable for their own actions. And that goes for an individual who commits actual rape (defined as truly non-consensual sex) or any other crime while under the influence. I don't excuse their behavior simply because they'd been drinking. But I don't think you benefit society by making legal acts criminal based on how a person happens to feel about it the next day.

The solution some feminists would come up with is something like the following. Declare the rape isn't non-consensual sex, but non-consensual penetration of the victim. Then the guy is a victim of sexual assault, but the woman is a victim of rape. Because guys can't get raped by women. And since rape is worse, her rapist gets punished.

Well, yes, but that is the perfect way to alienate the majority of men who would otherwise support them, because all I'm hearing is special pleading.

[Covenant]

It is special pleading. This has been a problem for a very long time, and has been the subject of movies and television and a loud social debate. The problem is pretty clear from this thread: how do you prove unwanted sexual contact? What is the "harm" if there is no penetration? How can a man, who has not been penetrated himself, claim to have been "raped" by a woman? When women are raped people can be extremely callous and assume she brought it on or wanted it. This is despite the societal demonization of female sexuality. Now put that claim within the context of "all men are ready for sex with whomever and whenever they can" and the very concept of male rape by a woman seems impossible. The only thing a man would not want, the logic goes, would be sodomization by a gay man.

This does not even address the "gay rape" question to the entirety. Under a "penetration only" rape definition it would not be rape to restrain and then forcibly grope and fondle another man, or use him for non-sexual pleasure, or perform oral sex on him, force kisses, force sexual touch upon the "rapist" by the victim, etc. The current definition is in the benefit of exactly zero victimizable people.

The foundation of this is rife with sexist ideas of male lust overriding all other factors, the idea that both men and women should "fight back" in all cases where it was not wanted, the assumed uniformity of male lust and heterosexuality, the societal approval of male sexual conquest no matter what other factors exist, and the bystander bias of "dude I wish that hot teacher would have slept with me in high school..." and so on. The law, as written, is silly and unjust because it does not address the many other important facets of rape and abuse which we absolutely have come to recognize.

The definition, as it stands, has always been self-serving for a segment of the population and some of the less intellectual feminist critics, but it is fairly well recognized as unfair. There's no reason it should not be changed to reflect the kinds of acts which lead to the emotional damage of rape, rather than the physical damage associated with the male rape of women.