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PaperclipPerfector  7mo ago (text post)   25759 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 1, 2024

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In most other situations "I made a bad decision because I had too much to drink" does not carry much legal weight. Assuming the women in your scenarios do in fact consent "in the moment", how can you invalidate this consent without also invalidating (for example) a woman's decision to go driving while in such a state?

ie. 'drunk woman decides to drive and crashes into a pole' --> prosecute her (I think?); but 'drunk woman decides to sleep with some gross nerd' --> prosecute him (?!)

Your framework seems to be denying women significant agency; seems a bit patriarchal to me.

The key difference is that only in the rape story has anything been done to her by someone else.

When driving, the damage is to the pole. Heck, let's say she ("S") kills someone else ("E"). S has violated E's rights, so S should be prosecuted for murder (or property damage to the pole). No one did anything to S, except insomuch as S did it to herself, so no one should be prosecuted (or held morally responsible) for anything that happened to S.

When S is raped, the damage is entirely to S. This was done to her by someone ("R"[apist]), who should be prosecuted. Debateably, S did something to herself too, but undebateably (well, it is themotte, but I feel pretty good about this one), there is the key difference that something was done to S in this one.

Further, in my version of the setup, she really hasn't decided to sleep with the nerd ("can't count to ten"). Past some level of drunk, you're on autopilot, and anyone who steers you transgresses. So yes, I absolutely do deny people agency once they are blackout drunk. I put that agency in the hands of society/morality to protect them. Enormously practical? No, so go be monogamous and sober, but still better than a free-for-all on drunk coeds.

Meta: the overall negative scores on most of my participation on this topic is fascinating. The categories are very fuzzy and my arguments were clearly not perfect, but I would have guessed mild positive. Thoroughly enjoyed the back and forth, all, even having "lost."

Double meta: downvotes are not supposed to be disagree buttons, in theory, but I think we use them mostly that way...and I like it.

In the case where the woman was drunk enough to make decisions she might regret later, but not comatose or whatever you are trying to conflate the (much more common!) situation with by "can't count to ten" or whatnot, the person she is hurting is the man. A rape charge for something she agreed to at the time is pretty harmful.

Why is it the man who's responsible for evaluating the woman's level of agency in her current state? Aren't people supposed to do this for themselves?

(Please don't motte & bailey this anymore; nobody thinks it's ok to have sex with someone who's literally losing consciousness -- I am talking about intoxication well below this state. If you want to continue in that direction, you need to very clearly specify what level of intoxication you think makes it categorically no longer OK to have sex)

When S is raped, the damage is entirely to S. This was done to her by someone ("R"[apist]), who should be prosecuted.

This is stealing a bunch of bases. The question is whether S, who got drunk on her own accord and had sex with T ("T"[roll], because the guy kind of resembles one) apparently consensually, was raped at all. Your proposal appears to be that "T" should have known that he's an uggles and there's no way in hell the hottie "S" would have had sex with him if she was at all compos mentis. The alternative is that "S" was responsible for her own behavior while drunk and if she had sex with some guy she wouldn't have had sex with sober, well, that's on her.

Past some level of drunk, you're on autopilot, and anyone who steers you transgresses. So yes, I absolutely do deny people agency once they are blackout drunk.

"Blackout" drunk refers to a state where someone is apparently acting normally, but is not forming long-term memories. Alcohol does not produce this sort of suggestive state; the drug usually associated with that is scopolamine, but that's controversial.

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