Poll: Is it rape if you have consensual sex with a willfully intoxicated person?

[Suicidejim]

Taking advantage of somebody who is drunk is what I consider complete asshole-ism, but not rape. Rape requires it to be against somebody's will, or without consent, and even a very drunk individual must accept the consequences of their own actions. I mean, if we did consider having consensual sex with a drunk individual who then later sobered up and regretted it to be rape, then that would lead to all kinds of unjust legal action. It's a system way too easy to abuse.

 

[Daystar Clarion]

Of course its rape. A person willfully getting drunk or unwillfully getting drunk isnt able to give willful consent to anything if they are drunk.

Now if you agree to have sex and THEN get drunk well then thats prior consent so you are fine.

What if they're both drunk?
Neither can give consent, but I've yet to hear of a case where a man brought a woman to court because they were both legally unable to give consent,so he considers himself raped.

A man can't be raped by a woman.

A man can rape a man and a man can rape a woman but a woman can't rape a man.

Penetration with a penis must me involved, and the penis has to belong to the person committing the rape.

Women can still be charge for sexual assualt, but not for rape.

Edit: To prevent anymore misunderstandings, this is in regards to UK law. Only a man can be charged with rape.

There was actually a case here in sweden that is in regards to this (well kinda), a man got raped by his ex-girlfriend and her friends, using strapons, and the entire case was looked upon more as a funny story instead of a serious crime, because it was a women who committed it.

And to the best of my knowledge, women cant commit rape in Sweden, they can hardly commit sexual harrassment as people seem to think its funny when a women does something that is usually something a man does.

Much like domestic abuse, I can imagine the number of reports of male rape victims being next to non-existant, because of the stigma that would be attached to it.

 

[chadachada123]

I don't think that two drunk people having sex should be illegal.

Nor do I think that a drunk and a non-drunk person having sex should be illegal.

If you don't specifically say no, then there is no way for the other person to believe that you don't want to if you're going along with the actions. There is no such thing as "she wanted to say no but couldn't" unless she was drugged very heavily (unbeknownst to her) or was coerced/forced into it, both of which are illegal themselves. It's also very sexist against men, and the endorses the idea that men can't be raped or have similarly regretful drunken sex, or that these instances "aren't the same" as for a girl.

Why is a girl that "easily makes wrong decisions while drunk" given sympathy if she has sex with a less-drunk guy and is convinced that she was "raped" when the similar, if happening to a guy, is treated with jokes or dismissal? It's disgusting and hypocritical.

As an aside, I've once heard a saying, "being drunk doesn't make you do anything that you didn't already want to do."

 

[Craorach]

Wow, that's great victim-blaming you've got going there. Just because someone is drunk doesn't mean that you can just have sex with them. Being drunk affects your judgement and impairs it. Saying "it's your fault, you got drunk" is VICTIM-BLAMING, you are saying that it is the victim's fault that they got drunk and then let someone rape them. It is not their fault. It is the fault of the person who decided to take advantage of their being drunk.

If both parties are drunk, it might be a little different, but taking advantage of someone who is drunk is still rape.

I am not, and would never, blame the victim of an actual rape. Rape is an abhorrent act.

Consenting to something because you are WILFULLY intoxicated and then regretting it is an entirely different matter. Alcohol doesn't make you do things you don't want to do, it makes you do things you want to do but sober know are not a very good idea. It lowers your inhibitions and lets you overcome the fact that sober, you're a sensible human being, and behave like a moron. Anyone drinking large quantities of alcohol, willingly, knows full well what they are getting themselves into.

We are not talking about someone who's been drugged, or had their drink swapped for more potent stuff, or is so drunk they can't move here. We're talking about someone who has gone out, gotten drunk, and willingly consented to an act and then regretted it after the fact.

Life doesn't, or shouldn't, work like that, you don't get to say to someone Yes, and then take that away and have them convicted of crimes so terrible that it will haunt their life until they die, just because you were drunk and regret it when sober.

This behaviour belittles the victims of ACTUAL rape by giving fuel to the "well, you shouldn't have done X" crowd. We are coming to the point where many crimes, not just rape, are having their definitions stretched so far that they are frankly becoming mockeries of their intent.

 

[TastyCarcass]

Drunk actions/words are sober thoughts. I've been accused of this myself at one point and I see it purely as their inability to accept responsibility for a mistake and immaturity.

Btw not actual immaturity. That would be wrong.

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

No its not. You have the morning after regrets, but if you go to a party and start drinking then you know what could very well happen. You bear as much responsibility for your own actions as a drunk who is behind the wheel of a car.

 

[dyre]

Date rape is what it is called. They are not in a logical state of mind where they can effectively weigh pros and cons of actions. As such the can not legally consent to anything. It's rape. However if you can have people testify that neither of you was anything close to sober and at the time it was "consensual" then charges can be thrown out.

I think you end up with problems regarding responsibility along that line of thinking, you know? Like, if a guy gets drunk, then he isn't able to weight the pros of cons of driving home properly, so he shouldn't get arrested for drunk driving, since he didn't legally choose to drive.

I don't think date rape laws are there to assign responsibility like in drunk driving; they're there because while it may be "morally acceptable" to have sex with a "willfully intoxicated, consensual" partner, making that legal would allow all sorts of abuse of the law. People who slipped date rape drugs into girls' drinks would just go "no, she was drunk and wanted to have sex with me."

When you weigh the benefits of having a law to protect guys who want to fuck drunk girls, against the benefits of a law to protect girls from date rape, I'd say the latter is more important.

no, date rape drugs are already illegal. That is, you can make it illegal to purposely get someone drunk/incoherent past the point of their own comprehension for the sake of taking advantage of said person. I don't like the way the law currently is, and there's no reason we can't make it a bit better while still protecting people from date rape and such.

Just make it illegal to purposely get someone drunk? A bit difficult to prove though, isn't it? It'd be a meaningless law. A rapist could just say "she willingly got drunk, and we had consensual sex, and when now she's just lying about the date rape" How could the prosecution possibly prove otherwise?

 

[michiehoward]

If there was consent there is no rape.

A whole shitload of women in the world have a dick they regret (to paraphrase Dave Chapelle) but its not when the other party wakes up and says "Oh crap I wish I hadn't have done that"

You shouldn't have in the first place.

Having sex with someone who is in anyway incapacitated and cannot consent yes or no, that is rape.


And the whole man intentionally getting woman shitfaced is bullshit. Unless said man is physically forcing drink down woman's throat, then woman is making the choice to drink.

Why do people have to make someone a victim.

 

[Safaia]

This is still a debate? What if the woman blacks out? What if she doesn't remember giving 'consent?' Someone on the first page mentioned that if you break the law while drunk you're still held liable as if you were sober. If you take advantage of someone's inebriated state of mind, whether they got there willingly or not, is still rape. A friend of mine got drunk in high school and was raped by two men claiming she gave consent. It was still rape. Someone I once trusted took advantage of the fact that I was drunk and the fact that I trusted him to assault me later claiming I said 'yes' I don't remember it. It was still rape.

Seriously, this is still a debate? I thought this conversation ended years ago.

 

[minuialear]

Something a lot of people seem to have missed (in the first couple pages, anyway; hopefully someone since pointed it out), is that in the U.S. (and I'd hope everywhere else), consent isn't a one-time deal. You can't ask a girl Saturday morning if she'll have sex with you (or ask a dude if he'll have sex with you; all the following can be assumed to work in both directions), and then have sex with her in the evening when she's drunk out of her mind, and still claim you got consent. You can't even claim that asking her an hour before she gets schwasted is obtaining consent; you need consent DURING and THROUGHOUT the act.

Which isn't to say you need to stop every five seconds and ask "Is this okay?"; the point being you can't ask a chick to have sex with you, get her drunk, have sex with her, and then claim you got consent. She needs to consent at the time of the act, and throughout the whole thing (because, you know, if you two get into it and she decides she doesn't want sex anymore, and you keep going because she said yes once...that's rape). If she's drunk, her ability to decide to back out is impaired, which renders her ability to consent to the sex at the point which it's happening non-existent. Saying you'll have sex with someone awhile before the act doesn't initiate a legally-binding contract obligating anyone to have sex with anyone.

The fact that some people seem to think it does (figuratively or literally) is more than a little disturbing.

 

[minuialear]

Blegh, double-post, sorry.

 

[Amaror]

This is still a debate? What if the woman blacks out? What if she doesn't remember giving 'consent?' Someone on the first page mentioned that if you break the law while drunk you're still held liable as if you were sober. If you take advantage of someone's inebriated state of mind, whether they got there willingly or not, is still rape. A friend of mine got drunk in high school and was raped by two men claiming she gave consent. It was still rape. Someone I once trusted took advantage of the fact that I was drunk and the fact that I trusted him to assault me later claiming I said 'yes' I don't remember it. It was still rape.

Seriously, this is still a debate? I thought this conversation ended years ago.

If she passes out. if she is no longer consious, then its rape, yes.
But if she just doesn't think it's a good idea anymore it isn't rape.
If two people have sex and AT THE TIME OF THE SEX HAPPENING no one thinks that this is wrong (And they still can think, are not unconscious), then its not rape.

 

[ms_sunlight]

If someone passed out because of a medical condition, or an adverse reaction to something, and couldn't say no, you would call it rape.

If someone was seriously impaired because their drink was spiked with alcohol they didn't intend to drink, or a drug like GHB, you would call it rape.

If someone appears so drunk that they are not in control of themselves, you have absolutely no way of knowing if it is "willful" and that they are not ill, are not having an allergic reaction to prescription drugs and have not been spiked without their consent. Even if it is "willful", it's still not right to take advantage of someone who isn't in control of themself.

I'm sorry, but some of the comments on this thread are just fucking disturbing. Do any of you really want to have sex so much that you wouldn't give a shit how much damage you did to the person you had sex with? Is it really worth doing that to someone?

This is a whole different thing to morning after regret. There seems to be this myth that loads of women get drunk, regret it the next morning and then tell everyone they were raped. I have no doubt that sometimes this happens, but it happens far less often than women actually being raped and not reporting it. There is plenty of research and statistics on this - Wikipedia has plenty [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_statistics].

I have had morning-after regrets after a one-night stand. I have also been sexually assaulted, and it is not the same fucking thing.

 

[LiquidGrape]

If someone passed out because of a medical condition, or an adverse reaction to something, and couldn't say no, you would call it rape.

If someone was seriously impaired because their drink was spiked with alcohol they didn't intend to drink, or a drug like GHB, you would call it rape.

If someone appears so drunk that they are not in control of themselves, you have absolutely no way of knowing if it is "willful" and that they are not ill, are not having an allergic reaction to prescription drugs and have not been spiked without their consent.

I'm sorry, but some of the comments on this thread are just fucking disturbing. Do any of you really want to have sex so much that you wouldn't give a shit how much damage you did to the person you had sex with? Is it really worth doing that to someone?

This is a whole different thing to morning after regret. There seems to be this myth that loads of women get drunk, regret it the next morning and then tell everyone they were raped. I have no doubt that sometimes this happens, but it happens far less often than women actually being raped and not reporting it. There is plenty of research and statistics on this - Wikipedia has plenty [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_statistics].

I have had morning-after regrets after a one-night stand. I have also been sexually assaulted, and it is not the same fucking thing.

This post bears repeating. With bolded for emphasis on the most egregious part of the recent discourse.

Seriously.
Some people.

 

[SL33TBL1ND]

Stand aside people.

Law graduate coming through.

Rape is very much a difficult topic in regards to the law, the vast majority of the time, it's one person's word against another's.

You can not give consent while drunk, but the other party has to reasonably know that you're in no fit state to give consent. Some people are very blatantly drunk, while other people can show very little symptoms of drunkeness. Most of the time, the two parties have the common decency to understand that when you're drunk and in the right kind of environment, you may end up shagging a complete stranger. One night stands are not uncommon and very few woman use the rape card. But there's always going to be the one woman with no common sense who will cry rape, despite putting themselves in a situation where they will drink too much booze and end up shagging someone.

Cases like these very rarely show up in court, and when they do show up in court, they very rarely result in a conviction. Judges hate these kinds of cases because it's just a clusterfuck of:

'well she said it was okay'

'I was drunk.'

'I didn't know she was drunk.'

'You raped me.'

'She said it was okay.'

'I was drunk.'

'I didn't know she was drunk.'

Clusterfuck.

I find this interesting, since in my country you're responsible for your actions if you've gotten yourself drunk, since you chose to be drunk. This is mostly in the context of drink driving, however, and I don't know how it would apply to rape.

 

[Twilight_guy]

Yes. Of all the bullshit I had to sit though my first days of college that was on of the things they specifically mention. The argument "You should know your limits" applies not only to him/her/it but also to you. You shouldn't get so drunk you can't tell if the person is impaired or not and you should be smart enough to know you make bad decisions when drunk. When you get consent it needs to be from someone who is fully "with it" so to speak and drinking heavily removes that capacity.

 

[madmatt]

Holy fuck, this is apparently not getting through to you people. It's not a question of REGRET vs. NON-CONSENT. If someone accuses you of rape the morning after, clearly they never would've consented to it IF THEY HAD THE PRESENCE OF MIND TO KNOW WHAT THE FUCK WAS GOING ON IN THE FIRST PLACE! Not being able to understand what you're consenting to is the SAME THING AS NOT CONSENTING! This is why they don't let kids get legally married. This is why mentally handicapped people can't sign a mortgage. YOU CANNOT HAVE A CONTRACT WITH SOMEONE WHO DOESN'T KNOW WHAT'S GOING ON!

Here's a novel idea, HAVE THE PRESENCE OF MIND TO NOT HAVE SEX WITH THE DRUNK "*****" IN THE FIRST PLACE! DON'T HAVE SEX WITH DRUNK PEOPLE. DON'T HAVE SEX WITH DRUNK PEOPLE. DON'T. HAVE. SEX. WITH. DRUNK. PEOPLE. Yes it was stupid for that person to get smashed and agree to have sex with you. But doesn't seem like it's infinitely more stupid for you to either A) agree to have sex with someone so trashed or B) ask to have sex with someone so trashed.

I honestly hope a lot of you die cold and alone.

This logic suggests that if both parties are drunk neither party were in a position to give either consent or non-consent, so it isn't clear that either is more guilty than the other...
Also, please tone the insults down

 

[sovietkitty101]

If your both drunk then no it's not rape, it's just drunken sex.

Unless you are in a country where the laws say otherwise.

I'm in England so I should be ok.