TimS comments on LW Women Submissions: On Misogyny - Less Wrong

27 [deleted] 10 April 2013 07:54PM

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Comment author: drethelin 11 April 2013 08:20:17PM 7 points [-]

Isn't the inverse there: "She attended a party, planning to get drunk and sleep with some guy who she wouldn't sleep with if she was sober"?

Comment author: TimS 12 April 2013 01:27:45AM 3 points [-]

Where's the consent issue? She made a decision when she was sober and had capacity to make decisions.

If you point a gun into a crowd and fire, it's no defense to say to you didn't intend to kill whoever was unlucky enough to get hit.

Comment author: drethelin 12 April 2013 02:25:05AM 5 points [-]

It would be a defense if the crowd showed up to a getting shot party (this is an exaggeration). There's a reasonable argument to be made that people show up to parties expecting to drink and do things they wouldn't usually do except when drunk. That makes it a lot less sinister for someone to plan on going to a party and getting drunk and having sex with a drunk girl, if the social assumption is that's what most people are going to the party for in the first place.

Comment author: TimS 12 April 2013 02:44:59AM 4 points [-]

if the social assumption is that's what most people are going to the party for in the first place.

Where did that social assumption come from? Can't someone drink at a frat party without wanting or anticipating having sex?

Comment author: drethelin 12 April 2013 05:11:44AM 4 points [-]

I don't know, but I'm pretty confident it exists. I'm sure someone CAN drink at a frat party without wanting or anticipating sex, and in fact most people probably don't get laid. But I also think it's not as immoral to go to a frat party expecting and planning on hooking up with a drunk person, as it is to rape someone.

Comment author: V_V 15 April 2013 12:39:24PM *  2 points [-]

Even if that person intended to have drunk sex, it doesn't mean that they intended to have it with you specifically. And anyway, I doubt that many people who intend to have drunk sex also intend to have it while drunk enough to be in a state of consciousness so much diminished that they are unable to consent.

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 15 April 2013 01:33:50PM *  4 points [-]

My impression is that both sides in the argument are using the level of drunkness which supports their point.

The people who don't want drunk = non-consent imagine people who are moderately drunk, who are more likely to say choose sex than they would be sober, and who chose to get that drunk because they want to have sex but otherwise wouldn't.

The people who do want drunk = non-consent imagine people who are very drunk-- unconscious or barely able to mumble and make vague gestures.

Neither side is entirely wrong-headed, though my sympathies are with the second group, since it's pretty common for people to drink to the point of incapacitation.

On the other hand, rules becoming much stricter than necessary happens too.

Comment author: OrphanWilde 15 April 2013 02:41:59PM 4 points [-]

I've encountered people who want drunkenness to be non-consent who explicitly reject the reasoning in your second example; they want any reduced capacity to make decisions to render consent invalid. (And I've seen some very convoluted logic about passive versus aggressive sexual behavior justifying why it's still rape when the man has also been drinking from a couple of them.)

(The inability to strawman feminism is really bizarre. It's possible to strawman individual feminists, but for the ideology as a whole, no matter how bizarre a position you can think up, there's somebody that actually holds that belief, and more insists it is proper feminist thought, and who probably also insists that anybody who doesn't agree isn't a proper feminist. And the craziest also tend to be the loudest; Jezebel, for instance.)

Comment author: [deleted] 20 April 2013 06:35:56PM 0 points [-]

any reduced capacity to make decisions

That sounds like a way too broad category to be useful. Most of the time there will be something or another that negatively affects my mental faculties.

Comment author: [deleted] 20 April 2013 06:29:40PM *  3 points [-]

My impression is that both sides in the argument are using the level of drunkness which supports their point.

Yes; I also suspect many of them don't even realize it -- simply, the typical example of a drunk person is someone who deliberately drinks in order to lower their inhibitions in the minds of the first group, but in the minds of the second group it's a passed-out person, due to the different experiences of the two groups and generalizing from one example.

(This is an example of a more general pattern, about which I've been thinking of writing a top-level post but kept putting that off.)

it's pretty common for people to drink to the point of incapacitation

I was going to say “is it?”, then I remembered that, according to this article (discussed on OB before BTW), I am from an “integrated” culture and you're from an “ambivalent” one.

Comment author: V_V 15 April 2013 02:53:57PM 0 points [-]

The ability to consent varies continuously with intoxication level, hence it could be technically argued that a gray area exists. But the effect seems quite non-linear, with a sharp transition. As a rule of thumb I would say that if somebody is able to walk on their own then they can consent, otherwise they can't.

I suppose there are cases when somebody first consents, or reasonably appears to consent, then they fall unconscious during the act, then they wake up and OMG I WAS RAPED!!!11ONE1!!
This type of "accidental rape" is possible, but I doubt it's common: evidence suggests that the majority of rapes, including those enabled by victim intoxication, are committed by a small proportion of men who are serial rapists and often have other patterns of antisocial behaviors. These people typically understand that their behaviors violate laws and social norms, yet they do it anyway because they don't care and believe (often correctly) that they can get away with it.

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 15 April 2013 03:04:21PM 0 points [-]

How do blackouts figure into this?

Comment author: V_V 15 April 2013 03:16:36PM 0 points [-]
Comment author: Eugine_Nier 10 October 2013 12:25:09AM 0 points [-]

since it's pretty common for people to drink to the point of incapacitation.

I think we should start by addressing this problem.

Comment author: ikrase 12 April 2013 06:33:23PM -2 points [-]

Also levels of drunkness, also directedness. IIRC evidence suggests some issues with intentionality.

Comment author: MugaSofer 12 April 2013 12:37:10PM -2 points [-]

That sounds like a very dangerous social norm, which should probably be changed at the earliest opportunity, but excellent point.

Comment author: drethelin 12 April 2013 06:22:35PM 0 points [-]

I don't necessarily agree. It's dangerous if there's a grey zone and all parties sort of sidle into it and bad stuff happens, but I think it's not bad to have a subset of parties for this purpose. A more socially acceptable and accessible version of play parties :)

Comment author: MugaSofer 12 April 2013 08:14:29PM -2 points [-]

If the norms were better articulated people could more clearly consent or opt out, but as it is I'd say it's easier to treat drinking as its own thing and create such parties from scratch if you must have them.