It is not that rare when using the current standard of consent. If you include any man who has sex while drunk (and is hence incapable of giving consent) then rape of men by women is very common.
Can you define drunk as you intend it in this sentence?
People seem to be very loose with this phrase recently and it's impossible to tell if they're doing so intentionally for political reasons, or if they're just not very good at communicating what they mean.
Drunk can mean someone has had 1 beer (e.g. drunk driving in many locations). It can also mean aggressively or flamboyantly out-of-character after several drinks, or it can mean basically incapacitated and in danger of choking on their own vomit.
Which part of this range were you ambigously referring to?
Thaumasiotes has already explained the situation on campus in regards what is considered drunk and consent, but even in the wider world you can only give consent when not intoxicated. The level of intoxication is not clear cut, but at least in Australia it needs to be “substantial” [1]. What exactly is substantial is up to the jury.
The US case law is much more murky as this article explains [2].
As made explicit in the sexual assault policies of various US universities, a female is unable to consent if she's had any alcohol (the "1 beer" model of being drunk). It is not a defense, or grounds for a counterclaim, that the male might have been equally or more drunk. (I say made explicit; the "any alcohol" threshold is what's made explicit. The wording of formal policies is generally scrupulously gender-neutral, but their application isn't.)
In an actual US criminal court, I believe drunken consent is no different from any other consent.
As much as I'd love to take your word on this, for me this still falls into the "they banned Christmas because of the Muslims" category of made up propaganda intended to enrage the more credulous (see the other reply for a demonstration of this).
I asked for evidence on this once before on HN, and they came up with two links. Both referred to the exact same case. And that case involved two people so drunk that neither could actually recall what happened.
That person at least provided links (admittedly they actually undermined his claims, but still). You've provided nothing but a bold assertion.
My suggestion to you and the original poster: if what you claim is true, is actually true, then a) stop using the word "drunk" as it is ambiguous, use the phrase "after one alcoholic drink", as this massively bolsters your case that the policy is ill-thought out b) have a link from a reputable source that actually backs up the reality of what you claim since on the face of it you'd expect a bigger fuss to have been made about this if it was true (much like I'd have heard about it via standard channels, not forwarded emails from racist uncles, if someone had actually banned Christmas because of the Muslims).
Edit: here's the first policy my Googling returned, it all seems very reasonable to me:
I was at grad school at Boston University in the very, very recent past and was lectured on the fact(?) that even a single alcoholic beverage precludes consent during their mandatory Title 9 intro. I can't find any thing regarding their sexual assault policies (other than "we do not allow or condone sexual assault") on their website, though.
I remember the announcement of a "mandatory meeting" for everyone in the dorm shortly after I moved in freshman year. I was intrigued by this concept and asked what would happen if I didn't go. The answer was, "nothing, but we'd like you to be there".
"Mandatory" appears to be experiencing some semantic slippage.
If a single alcoholic beverage precludes consent, then what if both parties have had at least one drink? How can that possibly be rape? If it is, then that's sexism, because it's a double standard: they're claiming the woman isn't responsible for her decisions while intoxicated, while the man is.
Under law, if neither party can give consent then each of them is guilty of rape of the other. The age of consent in New York State is 17, but the age of culpability for statutory rape is 16; if two 16-year-olds have sex, they raped each other under New York law.
But the way human social dynamics works is that in most cases, the male initiates sexual activity to which the female has right of refusal. So in cases of heterosexual liaisons where neither party is capable of consenting, the female -- who 90% of the time is the only one put in a position of consenting or refusing -- will not be prosecuted or disciplined, while the male will be.
You were advised badly then. Imagine, if you will, that the other party drank a Tourtell beer. That's hardly going to do anything, the beer has 0.4% ABV!
Relevant points include: (1) some schools' policies are worded so as to "lead to a young man being found responsible for a sexual offense simply if the complainant establishes that she had any degree of intoxication"; and (2) even where the policy would appear to be stricter than that, administrators frequently use the "she had 1 beer" standard when judging male students. An example in the article involves a college switching the basis for its adjudged punishment from nonconsent to presence-of-alcohol when the poor boy involved sought help from a lawyer to force the school to consider his abundant evidence of consent. (The punishment stood; only the official basis for it changed.)
I'll provide some other quotes from the article in a series of comments (since the unified comment was rejected for being too long):
> The Los Angeles Times summed up the events: “The college’s investigative report, performed by an outside firm, said both parties agreed on the following facts: Both had been drinking, she went to his room, took off her shirt while dancing, made out with him and returned to his room later for sex, asking if he had a condom. When friends stopped by the room to ask if she was OK, she told them yes.” Prior to their encounter, the two exchanged texts about their planned assignation, and Jane texted another friend to announce she was going to have sex. Later, when Jane came to see the incident as rape, she reported it to the Los Angeles Police Department. A female LAPD officer investigated, and a female deputy district attorney declined to pursue the case. She wrote, “Witnesses were interviewed and agreed that the victim and suspect were both drunk, however, that they were both willing participants exercising bad judgment.” Her report further found that Jane was capable of resisting and that John had reasonably concluded that her communications and actions conveyed consent.
> Jane lost her virginity that night, and when she sobered up and realized what happened, in distress she went to a faculty adviser who referred her to Dirks. An 82-page investigative report prepared for the school by the firm Public Interest Investigations shows it was Dirks, in her first phone conversation with Jane, who introduced Jane to the idea that she had been raped. Jane told the professor, “Oh, I am not calling it rape yet.” Over many hours of conversation, Dirks helped move Jane from what the professor described as Jane’s “strong state of denial” about what happened.
> Occidental hired an outside attorney to review the investigative report and make a recommendation about John. Here’s the conclusion of the attorney, as reported by the Los Angeles Times: “The attorney, Marilou F. Mirkovich, found that the young man did not know that his classmate was too drunk to consent because he, too, was inebriated. But, citing the college's policy that does not allow alcohol or drug consumption to excuse sexual misconduct, Mirkovich found that he should have known and was responsible for the assault.” After only a few months as a college student, John was expelled.
> Occidental pursued its own investigation by hiring the firm of Public Interest Investigations, which produced an 82-page report about the incident. Among other evidence, the report examined text messages between Doe and his accuser leading up to the sexual encounter. In the messages, the accuser asked Doe, “do you have a condom,” texted another friend “I’mgoingtohave sex now” [sic], and, in an exchange spanning 24 minutes, coordinated with Doe to sneak out of her dorm and proceed to Doe’s dorm to have sex with him.
This, despite the wording of the attorney finding above, is not someone who's incapable of consenting to sex.
> While women’s consumption is often considered a mitigating factor at campus tribunals, men’s consumption generally is not. This disparity is sex discrimination, says Brett Sokolow, president of the National Center for Higher Education Risk Management. Sokolow has long fought for harsh penalties for accused men on campus. But in an open letter titled “Sex and Booze,” he writes: “If both are intoxicated they both did the same thing to each other. Why should only the male be charged if both students behave in ways defined as prohibited by the policy?” He has been called in to consult on cases in which schools have suspended or expelled the young man when both students were equally intoxicated. Schools that are doing so, he says, are creating male “Title IX plaintiffs.”
> Sokolow also says schools err when they adhere to an unrealistic standard that consumption of alcohol renders consent moot. Criminal statutes generally require that for sex to be nonconsensual due to alcohol or drugs, the accuser be not just intoxicated, but incapacitated. Having had a few drinks does not mean people, even young people, lack the capacity to make decisions about their actions, however poor those decisions may look in retrospect. Sokolow notes, however, that at some colleges “boards and panels can’t tell the difference between drunk sex and a policy violation.”
> KC Johnson, of the Manhattan Institute’s Minding the Campus blog, has compiled a list of top-ranked institutions, including Columbia, Duke, and Stanford, whose policies could lead to a young man being found responsible for a sexual offense simply if the complainant establishes that she had any degree of intoxication. Johnson notes that at Brown if two people were drinking and later an accusation is made, the disparate treatment is stark. The policy states: “A charged student’s use of any drug, including alcohol, judged to be related to an offense will be considered an exacerbating rather than a mitigating circumstance.”
That's impressive. Twice on HN I've asked someone to back up the drunk sex = rape claim and in both occasions they've came back with the exact same incident.
It truly must be an epidemic.
As I pointed out the last time, and indeed in this very thread when I asked for some kind of proof this wasn't all just bunk, both these people were very, very drunk. Vomiting repeatedly drunk. No recollection of having sex drunk. If anyone sober had had sex with these people, they'd be considered by most people to have been taken advantage of. The only reason this is a gray area is that both people got themselves into such a state that they themselves have no idea whether they broke the law that night. Which isn't a great defence in any legal situation.
Here is Stanford's policy [1]. There is nothing about drinking heavily or being highly intoxicated. The policy just says "if intoxicated by drugs and/or alcohol".
Before I even click, I notice that's not a Stanford link. But instead something hosted by a political organisation that takes a stand on this very issue. Should I be worried by this oddity?
And now I've read it, and we've gone from confusion about what "drunk" means to confusion about what "intoxication" means. Do you have anything that actually defines this term in this context? Does a memo from 2009 have some kind of special legal force, that allows the widest possible interpretation of this term? If they meant after the first alcoholic drink, why didn't they clearly state that? Instead they used "intoxicated" which generally, but ambigously, means "really drunk" (thesaurus suggestion: "helplessly inebriated"). That's also what I would assume, but then I'm interpreting this memo in good faith.
I am not sure you should be worried unless you beieve the document has been doctored.
I think the basic problem we are facing is that the definitions are rather open to interpretation. I think we can agree that someone who is unconscious is incapable of giving consent and that someone who is 100% sober is able to (assuming they are of a legal age and not mentally impaired) - the issue becomes where to draw the line. This gets gray very quickly.
The real argument here is this interpretation is being done by ad hoc and inexperienced "courts" using a balance of probability. The risk of making a mistake is very high no matter how well intentioned everyone involved is.
I once saw a poster that said something like "Bob is drunk. Allison is drunk. Allison can't consent."
While a poster is not a statement of policy, it nevertheless is intended to communicate the standard that should be applied: that sex with a woman who is "drunk" (not "incapacitated" or even "significantly intoxicated") is rape, but this standard does not apply to a drunk man.
If you are drunk that's your fault, not any defense.
I mean: drunk sex is like drunk driving, being drunk should be held against drunk person, not used in his/her favor.
If you are accused of raping a girl on the sole grounds that she was drunk when you had sex, then the fact that you were also drunk should be grounds for a counterclaim of rape against her.
Obviously, that would be ridiculous. But so far as I have read, only Brown's policy explicitly takes the position you advocate, that while the female being drunk casts blame on the male, the male being drunk casts even more blame on the male. ("A charged student’s use of any drug, including alcohol, judged to be related to an offense will be considered an exacerbating rather than a mitigating circumstance.")
Except the article itself says "Seizing this logic, advocates for gender equality have persuaded the federal government, under civil-rights authority, to force higher-education institutions to investigate and punish crimes of sexual violence. Dozens of colleges are under investigation for failing to comply.
Although not explicit in the rationale for this approach, the lower standard of proof required to bring campus disciplinary action—including expulsion—is surely attractive to antirape activists, as it is for other civil-rights advocates who pursue civil remedies."
lower standard of proof
disciplinary action including expulsion
This is outright despicable.
There already witch hunts going on in some unis (with NO actual filed complaints or charges)
Which is sort of the point I was trying to make, but evidently quite badly. Yes, I agree with the author - these cases should be dealt with through the court system.
Then each party is criminally liable for the rape of the other, under law. But, in practice, for heterosexual liaisons the male partner will be charged and prosecuted while the female goes free.
People seem to be very loose with this phrase recently and it's impossible to tell if they're doing so intentionally for political reasons, or if they're just not very good at communicating what they mean.
Drunk can mean someone has had 1 beer (e.g. drunk driving in many locations). It can also mean aggressively or flamboyantly out-of-character after several drinks, or it can mean basically incapacitated and in danger of choking on their own vomit.
Which part of this range were you ambigously referring to?