This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
You're missing at least one thing that's going on - some rapes (or at least rape-adjacent behavior) are genuinely dissimilar to other crimes in the lack of mens rea from the perpetrator. The canonical example is a guy that takes a girl that's obviously blitzed out of her mind upstairs at a party. Sure, you can provide the admonishment that she shouldn't have gotten so drunk in the first place and you're going to be correct, but it's also plausible that it's feasible to shift the culture around hooking up with very drunk girls from it being funny to it being socially unacceptable. You're not going to convince Ted Bundy to not rape with a social awareness campaign, but you might convince some men that it would be a bad thing to take advantage of a girl that doesn't have her wits about her.
There are many objections to the above that can be offered, but my impression is that this is the type of thing that "teach men not to rape" is referring to.
You're probably right. But I dislike this behavior of expanding the definition of rape. At least 15 years ago, rape was a violent brutal crime, one where someone was trying to dominate someone else. Not something someone could do by accident. Mens rea was almost definitely necessary for a rape to occur.
Expanding this definition makes it so that people who probably haven't done anything that terrible or didn't intend to do anything that terrible, and maybe made a bad decision now are lumped in with violent psychopaths. It also takes away nuance from language. It may have also had the effect that you're positing, too, of making people less likely to hook up with drunk girls.
Hooking up with a girl who's too drunk to say no is, in fact, very bad behavior.
I agree. But it's not rape.
'Rape' isn't a natural category. It's a term for having sex with a woman who doesn't or shouldn't want it in a way that's sufficiently bad. That's why the term 'statutory rape' exists uncontroversially despite generally not referring to any use of force.
So this is really an argument about whether hooking up with a drunk out of her mind girl is bad enough to be considered rape. Now, I presume that we agree that giving a girl valium to hook up with her is bad enough to be justifiably called rape, just because most people do in our culture- there's a specific word for that kind of it. I presume we agree that if a man bought an eighteen year old woman- so old enough to consent to sex with him, not old enough to drink in the US, and not old enough to be presumed to know her limits with alcohol- alcoholic beverages until she was too drunk to say no, then took her back to his hotel room, we would agree that this qualifies as rape.
So is the difference the idea that getting taken advantage of is a natural consequence of sufficient public drunkenness? Because although there's a sense in which it obviously is, it also seems to be sufficiently horrendous that using the term rape is at least founded, if non-central, and if referring to it that way reduces the incidence thereof(which is entirely possible) then I'm all for it.
I think a key detail here is that alcohol is a helluva drug. It's quite easy, especially as a smaller, younger woman to overestimate your tolerance. Either of you also might not know what's in the punch exactly, or how long you hit the keg.
So, the ethical thing is to look at the person as you're getting to bed and ask "ok, but really, is it OK to have sex here?" I think if she'd never in a million years have sex with you after a moderate amount of alcohol, no. If in the heat of the moment and a bit buzzed, she'd probably have said yes, you're at least in grey territory, potentially fine, depending on the details.
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.
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)
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link