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This is exactly the problem with the whole ‘consent’ framework though, which is an inherently modern thing. Everyone understands that there’s such a thing as getting someone drunk. “I got my friend drunk last night”, or “our boss go us so drunk last night” are statements everyone understands. Yes, someone pouring you a drink, handing it to you and motioning you to drink it don’t mean you have to, but they don’t mean your decision is unaffected by social pressure and general interpersonal dynamics either. It is entirely obviously, transparently possible to ‘get someone drunk’ against their general desire unless they are extremely stubbornly inclined against it. I mean you’re surely not denying that social pressure, perhaps the most powerful human communal force, exists?
Yes, in most cases it is. In the same way I can get a recovering addict drunk and almost certainly encourage them into buying a bag of coke, a man can (sometimes) get a young woman drunk and get her to have sex with him against not only her best interest but the interest of her sober self, an experience that results in the man’s gain of status and the woman’s loss of it, (almost certainly) no sexual pleasure for her and often a clear sense of being exploited or dirtied afterward.
That is not to say that the man in question committed a crime. After all, plenty of unethical behavior is entirely legal. But it is unethical to get a young woman drunk because that way she’s more likely to fuck you because alcohol removes our (often very valuable) social inhibitions.
The ancients knew what rape was, women refused suitors all the time.
Widespread consent of the governed is relatively modern. Modern man, and woman, is considered capable of deciding.
I’d like you to assume the full consequences of your critique of consent. Could you develop? I think reactionaries who seemingly criticize consent, really value the consent of the father above the adult daughter’s, which kind of makes sense from a ‘women as overgrown children’ perspective, but I don’t think that’s your position.
Not in the exculpatory sense you’re using it for women. If you’re stopped for drunk driving, “my boss/friend got me drunk” does not work. The responsibility is yours. The fine is for you. You can reproach your friend for bad advice, being a bad influence, but ultimately, it’s all your fault.
My parents, like I’m sure, most parents, warned me extensively against social pressure as I was growing up, to prepare me for life as adult. Are you saying women are psychologically too feeble to resist that pressure?
Well that seems morally entirely fine. Surely you can’t expect a human to privilege the status of another above his? Any contest, any discussion between people has a status component, and usually one’s gain is the other’s loss.
Subjective state of mind contradicted by their actions. Worthless as an objection to the original deal.
If their consent at the time did not matter, then their withdrawal of consent later matters even less.
I'm going to bite the bullet; yes, they are, and past law codes had that in mind often rather explicitly. "Seduction of a virgin" was often literally a crime in western societies well into modernity, and in fact it's still on the books in some form or another all over the place.
Now yes, this does mean that women shouldn't have all the rights of adults. It's not a coincidence that extra legal protections for women started declining precipitously shortly after the introduction of women's suffrage.
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Adults are generally expected to be responsible for decisions they made, even if there was some social pressure involved. It could hardly be any other way, since there's almost always social pressure involved when two or more people are participating. It is not per se unethical to "apply social pressure" in the furtherance of having sex with someone either; if that were true we'd either have to switch over entirely to arranged relationships, or we wouldn't have any at all. The classic opening line of "Can I buy you a drink?" is not rape, nor unethical in the slightest.
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